Generative AI
Surprising Cyber Discovery! A cautionary tale about knowing what we know, what we don’t know and the difference
Have you ever heard of a model employee and top performer being let go? Not because of an economic downturn or black swan event. We recently learnt of a very smart leader that has just been heads down, executing on business objectives and getting desired results and sometimes even extra-ordinary results. Then one day, he’s told the organization needs a new leader with different competencies/skills because the industry is undergoing a rapid market transition. Unfortunately, they couldn’t wait for him to catch up. What! Wait, what happened to all my years of top performance? Sorry!
This is what disruption feels like, no apparent warning or heads up. It happens gradually and then suddenly, while we’re busy executing on key objectives and delivering results. And often times disruption creates and triggers market transitions. What’s interesting is that no one will pay you for working on market transitions, they’ll just leave you behind if you don’t or let you go in the case of our smart leader. This article highlights the significance of anticipating and recognizing market transitions and the role of boards. We will use AI as our example of a driver of market transitions but the broader insights applies to market transitions in general.
Three distinct insights are:
Smart leaders often fail during market transitions not for doing the wrong thing but for doing the right thing for too long
AI accelerates multiple market transitions in the digital economy and has a compounding effect.
Solutions for board directors, short, medium and long term. - Thinking mindset shift; thinking dimensions
Three distinct insights are:
Recognize the significance of market transitions and inflection points
Proactively recognizing market transitions has profound implications for leaders
AI accelerates all other market transitions; it is a transition of transitions.
AI is a compounding inflection point, the key word here is compounding.
Solutions for board directors, short, medium and long term.
Leaders miss market transitions not for doing the wrong thing but for doing the right thing for too long
Smart leaders miss market transitions not because they’re “busy” doing the wrong things but because they’re “busy” doing the right things for too long
Key disruption markers - fail to act or anticipate market shifts and inflection points.
Peter Drucker said, “There’s a difference between doing things right and doing the right thing.” Doing the right thing is wisdom, and effectiveness. Doing things right is efficiency. —- Doing the right things for too long can result and often does in being disrupted
Artificial Intelligence accelerates strategy, that includes bad strategies also and not just the good ones
Artificial Intelligence accelerates strategy, that includes bad strategies also and not just the good ones
In this article, we focus on the first. The primary objective of this article is to help directors avoid the common pitfall of focusing on compliance (in this case SEC Cyber rules) and inadvertently neglecting the required commitment to the underlying intent and stakeholder trust. U
There’s a significant number of topics and business concerns that boards have to grapple with and provide oversight for. At any point in time, directors at board meetings could be dealing with leadership succession, activist investors, disruptive risks, talent turnover, cyber risks and on and on it goes.
Trying to add something else to the list such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) can feel exhausting. There’s a tendency or silent temptation to lump it up with other technology initiatives or disruptive risks. Or to take a less proactive when it comes to AI instead of an intentional and galvanizing approach.
But if you’re seeking to enhance organizational performance and avoid potential disruptive forces, we would encourage you to consider a more proactive and galvanizing approach to AI for two main reasons
It takes time to realize material benefits
Competitive
Some organizations are already leveraging Generative AI (Gen-AI) to engage employees and to realize productivity benefits. For example, Walmart is using Gen-AI to help identify where employees need help with the productivity and crowdsourcing use cases from them. They’re also using it to help employees sift through their 300-page benefits guides for summary answers to questions.
Several other organizations are using it in a variety of ways ranging from patient journey (NY presbyterian) , JLL real estate, PwC and McKinsey conversation AI to help consultants.
And Microsoft has already launched gen-AI integration into email to help you respond to emails and help summarize meetings.
So what can a director do to be adopt a proactive and galvanizing approach?