In my last piece I summarised two documents: the Government’s new national strategy for digital and AI, and Enterprise Ireland’s Make AI Work. This time I want to say what I think they mean for anyone running a business. My view comes from more than four decades of management practice, including more than 20 years as a consultant.
Deploying AI is the easy part
The tools get simpler every month. What doesn’t get simpler is the organisation they land in: how the work flows, who decides what, and how the parts fit together.
Most organisations were never designed. They grew one reasonable decision at a time, like a jigsaw with no picture on the box. Put AI into that and you tend to get the same gaps, just faster.
So the question I’d ask isn’t “where can we use AI?” It’s this: knowing what AI now makes possible, how would you design the work, roles, processes and controls today?
Design it, then build it right first time
Here’s how I’d approach it. Start with what the business promises its customers. Then get clear on why customers want it: the jobs they need done, the problems they want solved and what they’d gain. Only then design how the organisation will keep that promise.
There are good tools for the first two steps. Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas sets out what the business promises, and his Value Proposition Canvas sets out why customers want it. Neither covers how the organisation keeps that promise. I built the Business Execution Canvas® (BEC) to fill that gap. It adds to those two canvases without changing them, and it puts on one page how the organisation delivers what its customers value. It has five pillars, and AI fits into each of them rather than sitting on top:
- Understand what customers must have, what they must not get, what would delight them, and what they’ll need next.
- Articulate that understanding, inside the organisation, across it, and to the outside world.
- Design the social, technical and economic system that will deliver it, including which work is done by people and which by automation or AI.
- Operationalise it, with automation, AI and digital technology taking on work under clear human oversight.
- Adapt, using data and AI to learn faster, and feed what you learn back into Understand.
The five pillars describe how the organisation delivers value, but they can’t do it on their own. They need a platform to stand on: the things that tell everyone why the organisation exists, where it’s heading, how decisions get made and how people work together. BEC calls these the six foundations:
- Mission / Purpose: why the organisation exists.
- Vision: where it’s heading.
- Principles: the rules for making decisions.
- Values and Behaviours: how people conduct themselves, in line with the values the organisation states.
- Strategy Deployment: how the strategy becomes priorities and plans at every level.
- Structured Collaboration: the structures that make teams work together, and the base everything else sits on.
It’s far better to build things right than to spend years fixing them. That’s as true of AI as anything else.
If it were me
So if it were me, and I was getting ready to talk to my development adviser, what would I do? I’d first be clear in my own head about what we’re trying to do: where we want the business to get to, what’s standing in the way, and where AI might genuinely help. Then the adviser can quickly see where we are and where we’re heading, and we can work out together whether any of their supports fit.
Every support has its own eligibility criteria and is subject to approval, so talk to your development adviser.
Talk it through
Whatever you’re facing, the first step is a conversation. If you’d like to talk about what AI could mean for how your organisation works, you can book a free 30-minute call.