Incorporating Change Management into Your AI Implementation, Part 5

AI Landscapes: Redefining Commerce, Careers, and Communities - Article 5 of 8

Choosing a good change management framework and using it rigorously will help you and your organization with this transition. Change methodologies abound, so there are plenty to select from. In this article, we’ll refer to The Change Cycle by Ann Salerno & Lillie Brock. But the lessons should be able to be adapted for whatever framework you choose.

Change has its own life cycle, and for most organizations, we’re in the first stage. The Change Cycle calls it Loss. When confronted with change, humans tend to experience loss of the known and fear about the change. Understanding where your organization is in the process is the first step to better understanding how people feel and how to guide them through to more positive states of being.

In thinking about AI and the lessons of The Change Cycle, a few things become apparent that should impact how you behave and communicate:

• Avoid trying to ‘fix’ the change. There’s not enough known about it yet.
• Avoid overhyping the advantages that may emerge.
• Actively listen to the fears and concerns of staff.
• Have empathy towards those struggling with the feelings of loss surrounding the change.
• Explore the question – “What’s the worst that could happen?” This will help direct concerns into tangible risks that can be managed.
• Channel fear into action.

You’ll remember from earlier articles on Futurecasting that we advocate an inclusive process that exposes staff to use cases and allows them to actively consider how their adoption would change the work that is done. We’ve designed this process to incorporate change management principles and meet people where they are.

As the team moves through the stage of Loss, they will encounter Doubt. In this stage, we need to focus on information and facts. Futurecasting and a skills-based view of work are intended to provide a framework for this information-seeking so that the team can start to understand the impacts the change will have upon them. This will no doubt usher in the next stage of Discomfort. Having more information and being involved in the coming changes helps them through the first two stages and breaks the paralysis that many organizations feel.

In our next article, we’ll describe the training program we’ve implemented to move organizations through this process into the subsequent stages of Discomfort and Discovery.  

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.

My sincere thanks to Ann Salerno and Lillie Brock for their great book on change management – The Change Cycle.