How to Talk to Your CEO (or board) about AI, Part 3

AI Landscapes: Redefining Commerce, Careers, and Communities - Article 3 of 8

This reality contributes to the feelings of paralysis many leaders feel. There’s just too much. So, it’s very human to want to stop and wait. There is inertia to overcome.

This era of AI development can best be characterized as one of active experimentation. The more people can be exposed and brought into the ideation process, the better. This is why we recommended “Diagnose and Futurecast” in our last article.

With the results of Futurecasting for a small number of high-impact roles, you’ll be better placed to start gaining buy-in from the CEO or board. Sharing the results from Futurecasting – work activity impacts, staff-generated ideas, and risks – will give you a better narrative for this purpose. “Diagnose and Futurecasting” was designed with the end in mind – to articulate, with data, what some probable impacts and opportunities are available. Basing opportunities upon actual roles and their work helps make the opportunity tangible. Baselining and estimating change is good financial discipline. Generating potential use cases with the impacted staff is good change management guidance (more on this in Article 6).

If you understand your CEO’s priorities, aligning an AI proposal with your company's strategic objectives will be a winning strategy. Whether they are focused on cost reduction, revenue growth, innovation, or customer satisfaction, chances are there is an AI solution that can solve them. Tailor your arguments, whether they are financially, operationally, or strategically focused while highlighting how AI can provide financial results with measurable ROI, improve efficiency and productivity, and provide your organization with a truly unique competitive advantage.

This series will explore four steps we believe you should be taking – now.

Diagnose and Futurecast: AI isn’t coming. It’s here. Involve your staff – especially those in roles with a lot of human capital – in assessing use cases to boost their knowledge of what is possible and demystify the nature of the change. We now know enough to futurecast roles and understand what they will look like in an AI-enabled world. We can be precisely wrong but directionally accurate about the next five years to develop a plan for how our workforce will change.

Reskilling Human Capital: This country has never experienced a technological shift against a declining labor force. Add to this that AI-experienced resources you might want to acquire will be limited and in very high demand. Just like back in Y2K, hiring your way out of this change will be hard. We must embrace a skills-based understanding of future roles and alternative paths for impacted people.

Content, Education, and Change Management: Change management was huge in the 1990s, and it’s time this discipline came back into fashion. We’ll discuss why acting to control the narrative is crucial and share some ways to do this effectively.

Reimagined Operating Models: All past disruption winners could reimagine a product or service leveraging technology to change the dominant operating model of the day. Uber & Lyft with taxis and Netflix with video streaming are great examples of changed operating models equating to success. We’ll explore how this can be done in a way that reduces risk and can provide speedy returns.

Over this series of eight articles, we’ll touch on all these paths of success to prepare you, your business, and AI's evolving impact on the workforce. Thanks for reading. Let’s talk AI implementation. Send me a note at wade@batonglobal.com.

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About Wade Britt‍

Wade Hampton Britt, IV is a partner and the Managing Director at Bâton Global. He has lived and worked in a dozen countries in the global express and edtech sectors before joining Bâton Global in 2016. Wade is passionate about helping clients and their communities navigate the AI disruption better than previous technological changes.