The increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in business puts a question squarely to leadership. Is this merely a tool or will it help to transform the company?
Buying AI tools and deploying them is easy. Making them relevant to what you do and becoming a tool for growth is another matter entirely.
Plenty of digitalisation and AI initiatives in Irish businesses have already failed because they are treated like just another IT deployment. Given their inevitable impact on the way we work, that’s simply not a tenable approach.
In order for an AI deployment to work, the leadership must demonstrate this is more than just another project and do so in a way that ensures staff can trust the plan.
RM Block
In many respects, this is a matter of communication. By prioritising a few key areas where AI will be used, at least as the deployment begins, leadership can use these two or three examples as outlines for the wider transformation.
Within this, they can not only demonstrate the impact on operations but also show that it is there to aid and not replace staff. This approach is also ideal for establishing a strong approach to governance and risk management early in the project.
The goal here is to remove friction and uncertainty so the deployment is smooth and beneficial to staff.
“As leaders, we have a responsibility to guide our teams through this transition, demystifying the technology and making it accessible to all,” Mary Ryan, chief executive of the Crédit Agricole Creditor Insurance (CACI) group in Ireland, told The Irish Times last June.
That accessibility benefits from the involvement of those teams. One of the old complaints about Microsoft Word was that it was built by people that didn’t use it. Factoring in user experience helped that tool and it can aid AI deployment as it is most likely to succeed if the end users work alongside those building the tools.
This also applies to those involved in the risk management and governance side. Having all parties involved in the creation of an AI tool doesn’t just make it more useful to staff, it makes it safer.
This is where a company’s culture is critically important. If there is already a culture where staff are encouraged to question, the likelihood is those same workers will be able to help catch issues in an AI deployment.
Leadership should seek to empower staff to engage with the process so that AI tools are built taking their operational expertise into consideration.
The company’s leadership should think from the start of an AI deployment about how they are going to build around it. The businesses that succeed with digitalisation and AI will be those where the leadership sends a clear message early and maintains it in order to ensure the transformation takes hold.
Building trust and governance into the process early gets staff buy-in while also reducing headaches down the line. This way, AI and digitalisation do what they’re meant to do and that is to work to make the business better.
