Don’t Hit the Rocks in Your AI Journey
Columbus sailed west from Portugal, confident the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria would find gold and spices in Asia. Instead, he found America (eventually). It’s a miracle they didn’t fall off the edge of the world.
AI affects everything in management, so mistakes compound fast. It’s frighteningly easy to a) head in the wrong direction, b) find your fleet got separated in the night, or c) hit the rocks lurking under the surface.
Instead, start with a sensible control mechanism—AI governance—and then start with one of four paths. If you’ve already started your AI journey, you’ll still find ideas here for the next leg.
AI Governance
Create an AI steering committee of executives from all management functions plus legal advisory. Their jobs are to set guardrails to avoid problems while at the same time encouraging controlled risks.
- Leadership (set the challenge, inspire everyone, make successful change possible)
- Training
- Policies (the “Don’ts”) See Google AI link
- Controlled experiments (The “Do’s”) Pick one of the four paths
- Process management (including competitive research and a prompt library)
It’s a truth of leadership that senior executives must an example to make bold changes possible. Time is always at a premium, but the risks of going too slow are too high.
AI Ethics
The Laws of Robotics are a set of ethical guidelines for robots, first articulated by author Isaac Asimov. Some people will argue that AI isn’t a robot. It might not be today, but it will be. Let’s not kid ourselves.
- A robot must not harm humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.
- A robot must obey orders given by humans, except where they conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as it doesn’t conflict with the First or Second Law.
Four Paths
If you’re beginning your journey, start with using AI for meeting management. Making meetings just a little more focused, informed, and collaborative will help win over AI resistors. You might set one simple, clear goal: “Use AI to make all our meetings at least 15 minutes shorter.”
Path 1: Meeting Management
- Agenda development
- Purpose statement
- Clarifications of terms
- Shared best practices
- Discussion questions
- Notes and follow-up
Path 2: Strategy Support
- Business structure
- Marketing and sales
- Operations
- Information
- Human resources
- Finance
Path 3: Leader Development
- Analysis
- Problem-solving
- Time management
- Task management
- Communication
- Facilitation
Path 4: Team Development
- Supervision
- Delegation
- Meeting management
- Planning
- Project management
- Process improvement
Gold at the Far End of the World
While it’s responsible to carefully manage AI adoption, you should simultaneously be keenly alert to breakthroughs in applications and in AI itself, its Large Language Models, agents, and Cognitive AI.
Make a cross-functional group of next generation leaders your “AI Futurists.” Ask them to challenge the steering committee monthly with edge-of-this-world ideas on industry applications and AI evolutions.
What if AI could help reduce costs of goods sold by 5%? Improve customer and employee satisfaction 5%? Big changes are scary—but think of the competitive advantages!
Related Terms
