Leaders – build your employees competence and give them trust and tools.

As a former leader of development team’s delivering digital solutions for clients - i know that predictability is crucial. This means time, resources, outcome, and deadlines where predictable budgets set the framework for the individual project. Development of artificial intelligence (AI) is therefore a challenge for both the leader, the team or company developing the AI solutions – because developing an AI is in most cases groundbreaking research, experimentation and innovation and do not have straight ahead project planning phases with an end. Developing AI will be unpredictable, and it will cost because it involves so many parts of your business – but the upside can be enormous – and there are ways to reduce uncertainty!

AI technologies have the power to amplify human potential. For businesses, that can be transformative, bringing radical cost reductions and efficiency, while opening new opportunities to create real value – meaning also return of investment. Therefore, using the right methods, build the right culture, have good processes, and the right tools, - competence and knowledge is essential to start working with AI – and of course trust to the people and their skills.   

IT departments have historically been— and remain—the champions of AI as organizations seek new ways to automate routine IT processes. The end game for the development team is quickly moving from experimentation to implementation to create value and measuring outcomes. As AI proves itself in IT, it is also starting to extend into other functions across the enterprise and AI is becoming a core aspect of business strategy. According to the survey from Infosys linked below, most organizations started off using AI to automate or improve routine or inefficient processes - which is often viewed as a good starting point because it can deliver quick improvements. When you look at organizations in later stages of AI deployment, many of these businesses also leverage AI to innovate and differentiate themselves and using AI to augment existing solutions or build new business-critical solutions and services to optimize insights and the consumer experience. 

Moreover, broader adoption of AI is fundamentally changing every aspect of the way leaders lead—from the way they recruit and train, to the way they inspire teams, to the way they apply AI and human power together to achieve their vision for the company, to the way they drive innovation and compete. 

Developing an AI-Ready Workforce and reduce uncertainty!

Being a part of Norwegian Cognitive Center is one way of reducing uncertainty. We have developed an ambitious program that we have started implementing. The long-term ambition is to raise, develop and specialize competence and the application of cognitive technologies and artificial intelligence through our adopted approach:

• Test before investing:
  At the end of a 5 days program we build an MVP of the concept you want to create. We help companies start their transformation in workshops, where you design and build real solutions and prototypes that solve your business needs. This is a low-cost method where you test the business value before you invest in implementation and scaleup.

• Skills and training: 
  The learning aspect is all about building knowledge, competence, and capability related to "Ai ladder" for all companies and their involved employees.

• Support to find investments:
  Through tight collaboration with NORA.startup and VIS Innovation and others we will make the projects investor ready.

• Ecosystems and networking:
  All our partners are about networking and giving value through the different industry clusters innovation ecosystems - here you can meet other people who has the same endgame as you - innovate through use of Artificial Intelligence

A few key takeaways

Here is a few key takeaways from the Inosys report, some guiding principles that may help business leaders navigate change as AI further forms the business landscape.

Put people first.
Businesses investing in AI should proportionately invest in their employees. The combination of people plus AI should be greater than the sum of the parts. Recruiting talent with AI skills is necessary. However, recruiting AI talent alone will be inadequate—those skills will be in high demand and, therefore, scarce, and costly. As AI increases in scale and drives further change, businesses that embrace training and reskilling current employees will realize tangible benefits. The business community should also look to partner with academic and governmental institutions to proactively develop the skills needed.

Foster a culture of life-long learning.
Training is important, but it should not be a one-time event. AI will bring about continuous change as the technologies improve and evolve. The organizations that are most successful will be the ones that adopt a culture of lifelong learning and facilitate opportunities for staff to continuously develop new skills. Establishing such a culture starts at the top. Business leaders likewise need to evolve their skills and gain a deeper understanding of the technologies that are driving their business forward. If they do not, they will not be able to maximize the benefits of their AI or their employees, and they might find that they themselves have become obsolete. At the societal level, our next generation will need to be flexible and adaptable to change, willing to learn new skills to ensure they remain relevant and provide value as AI technologies develop.

Build transparency into every aspect of the business.
Transparency will be a critical measurement of an organization’s commitment to, and success with, AI. Open communication about AI initiatives and their benefits can improve AI effectiveness and raise morale, curbing fears among employees that can sap motivation or foster mistrust. An enterprise’s champions of AI should also prioritize building transparency into their AI systems and processes. AI is complex and increasingly autonomous. Without visibility into AI, business leaders risk losing control of their business operations. By ensuring transparency, business leaders can uncover new opportunities and head off potential risks before they cause serious problems or harm to the company’s customers, employees or reputation. Think beyond business process automation. It should go without saying that organizations with well-defined AI strategies will have more successful AI initiatives. In the early stages of technology adoption, it is natural to focus on automating existing business processes because it often offers low-hanging fruit. However, automating a substandard business process may still be an inefficient business process that AI simply does faster. In the spirit of ongoing digital transformation and  innovation, AI initiatives should be thought of as an opportunity to reinvent every aspect of business for the better.

Do not delay.
As this report reveals, organizations across industries already realize the benefits of AI, and those with later stage AI deployments have a significant advantage. Organizations that are not already experimenting with AI or planning their AI strategy are without question falling behind.  Gartner claims AI technologies “will be the most disruptive class of technologies” over the next decade. AI is enabling a vast, connected and intelligent digital world that moves at breathtaking speed. In this environment, business leaders will need to rapidly and radically evolve their leadership skills, managing people and artificial intelligence to maximize both, while driving toward a shared future where AI benefits everyone

Sources:
The AI Ladder

The Infosys report: Leadership in the age of AI