AI-empowered Leaders: A Strategic Shift?

In my conversations with leaders from different industries, I find there is one topic that is fascinating to everyone – Artificial Intelligence (AI)!

So, when I was asked to share my thoughts on AI, I reflected on the changes I have been seeing across businesses. Let me cite some real-life examples.

Aida is a customer service assistant with a leading Swedish bank. What is unique about Aida? Well, she is a virtual assistant with natural language capabilities. I have not seen her yet but I believe she is one of the most intelligent robots in business. She responds to many frequently asked questions and also asks callers follow-up questions to solve their problems. She analyzes if a caller is angry or happy and accordingly provides the service.

While Aida is deployed in customer service, I am excited about how AI is being leveraged in HR. A global CPG company is leveraging an AI-led system to evaluate potential candidates in terms of attitude and skills. The best candidates as judged by the AI system are then invited for interviews with HR personnel.

Welcome to the reality of the AI-driven world – a potent engine for efficiency and innovation, and a driver for competitive advantage. Both in impact and implications, AI has never been more relevant than it is today.

With incredible speed AI has leapt from being intelligent decision-support assistants to active decision-making partners. In such a scenario, I believe leaders should drive AI to architect transformation that raises the value of business and people.

With AI’s rapid ability to draw ‘what if’ simulations, it can enable leaders to adopt innovative approaches with speed and scale. Leadership teams need to develop agile mindsets that dwell less on decision and more on strategic alternatives for the future. They can experiment with diverse decision spaces to constantly synchronize with their clients’ pulse – and nimbly incorporate feedback into decisions for continuous improvement.

This is what a global credit rating agency does. The company is embedding machine learning into its products for effective decision-making. Over time, the machines learn to pick the right data points that are crucial and extract smart insights to enhance operations.

Move to AI @ Scale – with the Right Partnerships

My experience tells me that the focus should now be on revenue-generation opportunities, not just efficiency improvements.

The time has come to sprint from AI pilots and projects to processes by adopting scale – and enterprises must transform their operating models to achieve this. Netflix, Amazon and Alibaba have successfully used AI to penetrate their processes and provide consumers hyper-personalized offerings with accurate context at the right time.

With rapidly evolving technology and challenges in acquiring AI-skilled resources, I understand how AI adoption at scale can be daunting. But this is where third-party companies with strong AI capabilities can help. From managing end-to-end processes to opting for selected services, there are multiple business models to engage with.

Undoubtedly, AI is the most transformative technology I have seen till date. Leadership imperatives come with high stakes, but also carry the promise of huge opportunities that no leader can afford to miss.