Designing for Excellence

Designing for Excellence

We have discussed already that the important role of leaders in an AI-charged organisational context is risk and security management. GenAI in its early implementation has been notorious for hallucinations, bias and misinformation, and while accuracy improves through repetitive use, there has to be constant vigilance for errors. On the security front, data leakage, poisoning by external injection of unvalidated data and corruption by unchecked human intervention will all have to be guarded against.

Steps in designing and implementing true enterprise transformation can be broadly grouped into the following:

1. Establish a top-level vision after assessment of the current status of technology, process, culture, common digital language and understanding of leadership.
2. Select business and functional domains that are the highest priority, and develop a road map for the next two to three years, subject to periodic progress review.
3. Form cross-functional teams that can experiment and recommend process changes and technology touch points, and develop a new operating model for scale.
4. Choose core AI platforms that lend themselves to digital workflows and are optimised for ‘human in the loop’ checkpoints.
5. Establish governance structures, continually assess risks and ensure compliance.
6. Monitor the deployment of AI across workflows, processes and systems; watch for inefficient human–AI collaborations that could sabotage the role of the human; and identify and scale successful use cases.
7. Promote a questioning and innovation culture across the organisation, provide ample upskilling opportunities and ensure leadership engagement through the journey of implementation.
8. Combine dramatic process transformation efforts with a climate of continuous improvement and innovation. Measure the ROI and operational impact of every stage, and take corrective action early.

Measuring the ROI in AI is a combination of hard and soft measures. The cost reduction, time savings and productivity increases that are measurable must be targeted and achieved or exceeded, but equally important are improved experience for all employees, leading to being a ‘great place to work’ and attracting new employees to the organisation. Increased innovations at individual, team and organisation levels with constant creation of new products, processes and potentially new business models are all likely and very desirable outcomes of this strategic approach by leaders!

A Final Word on Leadership

In this journey through the book, if some of you have felt overwhelmed by the thought that this is too much transformative change for the leader to manage, and the entire strategy and implementation is best delegated to an expert team within or from outside the organisation, you are likely to lose the plot and, eventually, your place at the top of the organisation chart. Strategising and implementing a game-changing AI scenario in any organisation needs the complete involvement and understanding of the leader and the leadership group and their personal attention to the transformation that will need to unfold. The choice and deployment of technology, the re-engineering of business processes and orchestration of data flows are all too important to be delegated or abdicated. This means that the leadership group has to first equip itself with knowledge and not technical but application understanding. They should not be afraid to educate themselves in areas where there is initial discomfort. Building the AI-transformed organisation is a journey, not a destination, but clear goals and milestones can be set for the progress that must be made in transforming processes, functions, people and the organisation. In the words of Swami Vivekananda, ‘Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached.’