OnStrategy’s Post

Transcript

Welcome to the new Virtual Whiteboard series from The Virtual Strategist. My name's Erica Olson. I'm the CEO of On Strategy. We're so glad you're here. This new series is on AI strategy, everything that you need to build and implement an AI strategy for your organization. It's the topic of the year. It's taking business and organizations by storm, and for good reason. We're super passionate about it. Over here at on strategy, we believe that is going to transform organizations and everything that we're doing absolutely. And the reason honestly strategically that I'm most excited about it is because AI has the potential to really increase the impacts organizations have on this world communities and their businesses. So this video specifically about what is an AI strategy and how to think about creating one. Reorganization. I'm gonna go through a framework that you can use to build your plan. So let's jump in. OK, so here's our whiteboard that we're going to use to walk through what is AI strategy and the framework we're going to use to build yours. So what is an AI strategy? Simply put, it is a plan to integrate AI, generative AI, automation, machine learning into your organization. A successful AI strategy should act as a road map. To implement your biggest opportunities in your organization. So what's happening right now in a lot of organizations and a lot of companies is there's just chaos around where to focus, how to use AI, where to start all of those things. This entire framework is going to create organization out of the chaos. Who should help you create an AI strategy? Well, there's a bunch of different folks that you need to have in the mix at different times, but for sure. Led by your executive team, we need our executive teams to set the guiding principles for what is going to be responsible AI and organizations. So if you're part of that team, start there. Please check out those videos. Certainly at an individual and staff level, people have a lot of ideas about what can be done to improve operations and processes and organizations. Your IT team, they need to be there, as does your legal team. And then some external resources that you might consider would be an AI expert and a strategy facilitator. So we have definitely found having some AI expertise in the room to either guide or evaluate the AI strategy and opportunities that you're going to identify has been helpful to accelerate moving from idea to execution. So that's who should be in the mix. And of course, sorry, I should say before we move on strategy facilitators, we believe that it's super helpful. This is all about. Change. This is all about behavior shift. This is all about organizing yourself differently to get the work done, and facilitating having a facilitator and a leader to do that is super important. So, all right, let me move myself out of the way and talk about the actual framework. So what should be included in your AI strategy and road map? Well, here is your checklist and I'll leave that there. Or you can pause the video and check it out. But I'm going to use the diagram over here on the right hand side to really unpack what the AI framework this AI Rai framework is all about. So First things first, you need to make sure that your AI strategy is guarded by and guided by the core purpose of your organization. Where you're going, you're big, bold vision and your winning strategy. AI is an enabler and an accelerator. It is not an end. It's a means to the end, but it's not the end. So we need to make sure that work is done first. Falling following from that is your AI governance. So your AI governance is really those guiding principles that need to be in place in order to make sure that you are responsibly using AI automation and machine learning. I'm just going to use all those words together. So again, there's some videos on that, check it out. But just to really comment on the fact that. It's important to do the governance work first to say what are our guiding principles and how are we going to guide the execution responsibly in our organizations? Because otherwise your organization will not engage with you on this topic because honestly, people are worried about losing their jobs. And this entire approach to responsible AI and your governance around this is about addressing that issue because you want everybody to be part of the conversation. So that's the next piece of your AI strategy is your governance piece? And then we're going to look at opportunities and the strategy, building a strategy in two buckets. Bucket one is your productivity theme that is everyday AI. There is a whole bunch of stuff and you need an AI strategy around work, task optimization and automation using every day I to improve, simplify, automate, streamline work tasks. So that's bucket #1. Most organizations are starting there. Bucket #2 is your growth theme and that is really your transformation. Those are those transformational opportunities that are are are really where we want to go with AI, really transforming the way that you deliver value to your customers, your staff and your stakeholders. So there's obviously a whole bunch of opportunity there as well. We have found that organizations need to start with everyday AI before they can move. Transformative AI. So just kind of just know that we don't need to do all of this all at once, but your strategy needs to have those two pieces articulated. And last but certainly not least is the organizational enablement. I mentioned before that the change aspect of this is so important and it's important to know as organizations that we are wanting to enable human efforts and automate what's automatable and an AI was AI able And so that means that our team needs to be enabled and re skilled and possibly restructured. So that's the third piece. Of your strategy. So that's a framework, we developed this. It's really working. It's really it's helping create organization out of the chaos. As I mentioned and also just a comment, you don't have to do all of this at the same time. You can start with one piece and then work through them as needed. There are videos on each section of this framework as well as pre built mural boards to facilitate this work with you and your team. So if you want to use our mirror boards, click on the link to figure out how to do that. If you'd like to put us on your team to help you facilitate this, we love that. We also have AI experts we partnered with as well, so don't be shy. Certainly reach out. Click the link at the bottom of the screen if you'd like to connect. We'd love to hear from you, so please don't be a stranger. Subscribe to this channel if you haven't already. Reach out to us and let us know how you're doing with your AI strategy and go forth and mission multiply. With all of the cool efforts that AI is bringing forth to you and your organization, happy strategizing.