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Summary: Whether we like the idea or not, Artificial Intelligence is here to stay and will continue to expand its influence on the way organizations operate. Intelligent organizations will thrive and the rest will ultimately fail. So, how do we lead an intelligent response to AI?

Leading An Intelligent Response To AI?

The response of many leaders to AI is to seek the obvious efficiency opportunities that AI can offer, in order to achieve improved profitability. However, the leaders of intelligent organizations focus on how AI can help their organizations to become more effective. They understand that focusing on the efficiency opportunities that AI offers is short-sighted and may lead to longer-term damage to their organizations. They know that efficiency is just one of the many important outcomes of building and maintaining a highly effective organization.

A Holistic, Integrative Approach To AI

Leaders of intelligent organizations have a holistic, inclusive approach to ensuring that their organization is and remains highly effective in the AI era, as follows:

1. Ensure Clarity Of Purpose

Leaders of intelligent organizations clearly articulate why their organization exists, that is, exactly what its worthy purpose or just cause is. And they ensure that each and every employee is aligned with and understands the importance of their role and how they contribute to their organization’s important mission. This clear, worthy purpose is fundamental to gaining the discretionary effort of all staff, and it acts as a compass to ensure that their organizations do not inadvertently veer off course in the disruption that AI will cause. Importantly, it provides the clarity required to leverage AI and ensure that the organization’s performance systems are designed, calibrated, and iterated to consistently and effectively deliver their worthy purpose.

2. Implement Systems Thinking

Leaders of intelligent organizations use systems thinking to understand exactly how their organization works as a whole to deliver their organization’s mission. They are acutely aware of interrelationships within both operational delivery systems and human engagement systems and how these two systems must be aligned to work in sync. This enables them to quickly contextualize value-add opportunities provided by AI and integrate new thinking into building organizational capacity, rather than becoming reliant on AI as an external resource.

3. Create Operational Slack

Leaders of intelligent organizations focus on how AI can help them to create operational slack. Creating operational slack is the intentional act of building an excess of resources (time and capacity) beyond that currently required. They are well aware that operational slack will be essential to buffer against uncertainty and unpredictable events that AI may cause, for example, supply chain disruptions because key suppliers may take a short-sighted efficiency gain approach to AI; to create time for seeking new and better ways of doing things and working together; and to ensure that the uncertainty and stress that AI will potentially cause people can be managed because there is time to engage and help people to find a new future given the AI reality.

4. Enable Open Communication

Leaders of intelligent organizations understand that in times of uncertainty, transparent, consistent and regular communication from leadership is crucial for building and maintaining trust with employees. Importantly, leaders of intelligent organizations share their rationale for making key decisions and transparently take accountability for these decisions.

5. Build Collective Internal Intelligence

Leaders of intelligent organizations foster building collective internal intelligence. Specifically, leaders of intelligent organizations are clear about how they will promote internal learning over AI dependency. They encourage the use of time, created by operational slack, for team learning. Learning and Development experts are tasked to create opportunities for teams to develop their collective intelligence through social learning. This involves engaging in dialogue and discussion to find better ways of doing things, to develop better ways of working together, and to solve complex operational problems. Teams are empowered to upskill and reskill so that their members can remain relevant and effective in the face of the changes and disruption that AI will create in their operating environment. Teams are required to test new thinking provided by AI sources and when they are proven, to document them and implement them as new standard best practice.

6. Ensure Ethical And Transparent AI Use

Leaders of intelligent organizations contract with their employees to be transparent and ethical about their sources and use of AI. This means that people are required to reveal any use of AI and to thoroughly test new thinking in the context of the organization before applying it and using it to iterate or improve existing ways of doing things, in a structured and systematically sensitive manner. In this way, relevant sources from AI are translated responsibly into collective organizational intelligence that resides within the relevant structures and systems (as institutional capacity).

7. Encourage A Growth Mindset

Leaders of intelligent organizations understand the pivotal role that mindset plays in how their people think and act. They promote a growth mindset so that their people and organization can be resilient and respond positively to the opportunities and challenges that come with AI. They encourage the uncovering and challenging of assumptions and beliefs that influence how we see the world and take action. They foster language and dialogue that builds healthy mindsets and challenges unhealthy ones.

In Conclusion

Leaders of intelligent organizations use AI to create operational slack so that the appropriate time and effort can be dedicated to systematically and continually evolve the organization to remain relevant in the face of the massive changes and challenges that AI will create in operating environments. Leaders of intelligent organizations see AI as an opportunity to systematically evolve the long-term effectiveness of their organizations rather than just short-term gains in efficiency, which may leave their organizations denuded and vulnerable.