The people problem
How do we redesign the workforce around AI?
Talent optimisation
The rush to unlock value from AI risks overlooking how much the potential of your workforce remains untapped. We talk as though organisations already have a fine-tuned operating model and AI offers a way to level up in respect of value.
Yet organisations built on industrial-era principles often view value primarily through the lens of cost reduction. Through that lens, AI becomes a means of reducing headcount rather than expanding what people and the organisation can achieve.
It also assumes that the workforce are merely extensions of the ‘factory machine’, managing the processes or being a process component. So with the arrival of AI, the question becomes, is it possible to repurpose the cogs we have? Or perhaps we need fewer cogs?
This industrial lens is blurred to the reality that the world is no longer predictable. So adding a probabilistic technology such as AI into a machine predicated on uncertainty is unlikely to work. And even if it has had a recent business engineering refurb, it would eventually collapse under the unrelenting macroenvironmental forces bearing down on it.
So the problem as stated is the recognition of a symptom rather than the structural issue.
Let’s pretend
Let’s imagine that you run a consulting firm, and you recognise that we are in the midst of a gold rush. There’s no time to help your clients understand the deeper problem, not least because the CEO has enough headaches to be getting on with. Fixing the symptom (here’s a tin shovel) is a much easier sell.
So you review the organisation’s processes and establish what the workers do and whether any elements of that lend itself to AI.
You present to the leadership team informing them that the majority of what the workers do is process oriented and thus the organisation can make significant cost savings by replacing the workers with AI.
You might skim over the fact that AI is inherently untrustworthy and that it might leave the organisation exposed in respect of governance, even if it is delivering.
You smile knowing that such ‘fine details’ are the seeds from which the next wave of engagement opportunities will blossom. ‘One and done’ doesn’t sit well with the traditional consulting model.
We need to talk about assumptions
Again this approach assumes that the organisational design is sound and that this is an exercise in making it faster, smarter and / or cheaper. But let’s remember that a faster, smarter, cheaper Titanic is still a Titanic. And even one optimised to detect icebergs is no match for the then emerging air travel industry.
Whilst your organisation might well have been designed with elegance in mind, acquisitions, restructures, changing markets and enterprise IT systems have turned what was once modular into something akin to a ‘cat’s cradle’. Move one finger and all the other fingers are pressured into moving. Add AI to this and you start to lose fingers.
And because the world is more uncertain today, even an elegantly designed factory will fail to respond and adapt in tandem with an increasingly turbulent market.
People revisited
Let’s gloss over the organisational design challenge to keep this newsletter below 60,000 words (You can visit the Lab to explore further). ‘Novelty’ is on the increase as the world becomes more uncertain. Novel situations require an innovative response. An inability to innovate at a velocity commensurate with market shifts will lead to a viability issue.
AI is increasingly capable of being innovative. And with thousands of years of training it should be pretty good at it. But it doesn’t understand context and is unable to cope with signal detection in very small datasets. People on the other hand have had millions of years of training in the most hostile of environments, yet employers overlook this and treat people as mechanical cogs.
Innovation today is like a greenhouse at the bottom of the garden. There may be a few people pottering away in there, but it is decoupled from the day-to-day activities of the main building. We need to think less of a building with a greenhouse and more of a grand pavilion where innovation is integrated into day-to-day operations.
Every person has the potential to be innovative, though Western schooling has done an impressive job in replacing the creativity gene with one that expresses compliance. Ideal for both the industrial model and its HR department.
Next steps
Develop an awareness of the broader organisational design issues you likely face (This way, please).
Create an environment where your people feel human. The more anxious they feel the less cognitive bandwidth will be available for innovative endeavours.
Develop your team leaders, managers, departmental heads to recognise the difference between resources and assets. The aim is to get the best from your people, not the most.
Automate all processes where the technology is sufficiently mature. Include people in and on the loop to govern this and manage exceptions (an innovative activity).
Consider how AI can be applied beyond process automation to human augmentation, particularly in respect of innovative endeavours. Human and tech, not human or tech.
Build a culture centred on performance rather than activity. In athletics terms, we need to stop paying the winner less because they spent the least time running the race.
In summary
Whether you like it or not, you are not in the AI or applied-AI business. You are in the cognition business, and most likely you are sitting on a cognitive goldmine (natural intelligence) whilst chasing AI (artificial cognition).
AI is the future, no question. However, good corporate governance in turbulent times means making better use of the assets you already have before joining an AI spending spree simply because everyone else is.