Training Your People for Immediate Impact

AI is a top strategic priority.

In a recent study by BCG, 89% of the executives ranked generative AI (GenAI) as a top-three priority in 2024 (cybersecurity and cloud were the other two priorities). Yet, 66% of those executives were ambivalent or dissatisfied with their organization’s progress on GenAI. They cited three reasons for their dissatisfactory performance:

1. Lack of talent and skills
2. Unclear AI & GenAI roadmap and opportunities
3. No strategy for AI & GenAI

Another study by Microsoft and LinkedIn of over 31,000 respondents worldwide showed that over 75% of knowledge workers are using Generative AI today (nearly double the figure from 6 months previous). Yet, while 66% of leaders say they wouldn’t hire someone without AI skills, only 25% of organizations say they will offer training to their employees. 

We simply see this as a missed opportunity. In an experiment led by Harvard Business School with BCG Consultants studying the impact of GenAI, they showed typical consulting tasks completed with the support of GenAI increased the number of tasks completed by 12%. The speed of task completion increased 25%, and quality of work increased 40%. The greatest impact was seen on below average performers (>40% increase), but impact was seen across the board (17% increase in above average performers).

These technologies will increasingly support so many of our daily tasks like strategic thinking, communication, data analysis, research, and so much more. And, the benefits of training your people can provide immediate impact in their day-to-day work.

Why, then, are leaders who see the impact and importance of these technologies choosing to leave the skills development of their workforce to chance? While the research is still evolving, it’s likely a combination of the rapid emergence of AI, FUD around the impacts of AI, concerns around data security, privacy and IP risk, competing priorities, and many others. These are all valid concerns and challenges, but the reality is that the sooner you can start to train your people, the greater your capacity will be to address these challenges directly.

So then, what can you do to equip your people with the skills to start leveraging AI more effectively today?

AI is a very broad term and a rapidly developing field. Organizations will increasingly require specialized skills and roles around AI, Data Science, Machine Learning, and many related fields. Becoming an AI-Driven organization won’t happen overnight. However, we believe there are two areas that organizations will greatly benefit from upskilling their people today.

AI Strategy & Management: develop perspective on the impact of AI for your organization and develop the skills to drive effective AI implementation.

Generative AI Usage: equip your people to maximize the value they are receiving from their interactions with Generative AI.

AI Strategy & Management

In the coming weeks, we'll share more about how leadership can develop an effective approach to AI Strategy & Management. In the meantime, here is a quick teaser on what every leadership team needs to be equipped with to adapt in the new era.

1. AI Impact: Understand the impact of AI and how it can be used to transform the way you organizations work, improve customer experiences, and how it’s driving competitive disruption.
   
   
2. AI & Humans: Understand how AI usage impacts the humans that makeup your workforce, customers, and communities. Effective solutions and rollout of AI programs will depend on it.
   
   
3. Data Foundations: AI runs on data. Ensure your leaders understand the importance of data and have a base-level understanding of data foundations.
   
   
4. Delivering AI value: The AI hype machine is on overdrive. Understand how to identify valuable and feasible AI use cases and translate your experience in delivering digital solutions to AI technologies.
   
   
5. Responsible AI: Understand the risks and ethical considerations of AI adoption and implementation and develop policies and governance to ensure responsible AI usage. 

Further reading in the mean-time:

1. McKinsey: A New Future of Work: The race to deploy AI and raise skills in Europe and beyond
2. HBR: How AI Affects Our Sense of Self
3. Oxford Insights: Organizational AI Readiness Assessment
4. BCG: A Guide to AI Governance for Business Leaders

Generative AI Usage

Perhaps one of the contributing factors to why organizations aren’t planning to train their people is the low barrier to value with these Large Language Models (LLMs). It doesn’t take much to get “impressive” results. In the early days of ChatGPT, it was astounding to get responses from these LLMs that were clearly different from what any other technology has ever provided us with previously. Suddenly, you could have Snoop explain quantum theory, replace Romeo and Juliet with Siri and Alexa, and impress your friends with smug questions with nothing more than a line of text.

While the results may be impressive compared to our expectations of previous technologies and the speed gains are certainly helpful, the most common critique I hear is that the results are bland, potentially inaccurate, and generally lacking a human level of quality. These are good critiques, but the challenge is that many people stop there. The true value in leveraging generative AI comes when you hold the line on quality and learn how to collaborate with the tools effectively.

Current LLMs, like ChatGPT, are a bit like a junior employee with an encyclopedic memory of every fact, perspective, and opinion ever posted on the internet. They can do amazing things when instructed well, but knowing how to get the best out of them takes learning, persistence, and practice. 

Here are a few areas where we believe every organization should be equipping their employees:

1. The art of the possible: Inspire confidence in the opportunity and motivate your people to invest in practicing by demonstrating how people are utilizing GenAI in their work today.
   
   
2. Effective Prompting: Learn strategies and tools to improve the quality of output you’re receiving from every interaction with Generative AI.
   
   
3. Advanced LLM Usage: Develop Custom GPTs to perform repeatable tasks, utilize web browsing, use multiple modalities (text, voice, image), and utilize code interpreter for data analysis and technical tasks.
   
   
4. AI Process Augmentation: Understand how to break down jobs into tasks AI can perform and how to effectively utilize AI to augment your work.
   
   
5. Current Limitations: Recognize when you should and shouldn’t utilize current LLM capabilities (coined as the “Jagged Frontier”).
   
   
6. Responsible AI: Ensure safe usage of sensitive data and understand ethical boundaries of AI usage to guide responsible AI usage.

Investment in AI continues to increase and we see more and more use-cases for GenAI. Every day, there are an increasing number of practical skills that are important for employees to have in their toolkits to perform their work as effectively and efficiently as possible. Start training your people to stay ahead of the curve and see the immediate impact in doing so.

Reach out today to explore how Sam can support you with increasing your organizational usage of AI.