Time For Business Leaders To Step Up Their Own AI Training

We’ve seen it endlessly within the business technology space over the past several decades: organizations invest thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars, euros, rupees, or pounds on the latest technology and drops it onto their workforces, expecting overnight miracles in productivity and growth. Then, nothing happens — or things even go sideways.

It all boils down to one thing — poor leadership, or even a lack of leadership, especially now when it comes to AI. Unfortunately, if anything, AI seems to be paralyzing business leaders — and even their technology counterparts — into inaction. They don’t understand the ramifications of the new technology, or simply refuse to immerse themselves within it. But immerse they must, to succeed in helping their organizations realize the possibilities AI offers, while navigating through the pitfalls.

That’s the word from David De Cremer, business school dean at Northeastern University, who urges business and technology leaders to overcome any nervousness and step up and learn the ways and means of AI. In his latest book, The AI-Savvy Leader: 9 Ways to Take Back Control and Make AI Work, De Cremer points to one of many failed instances where the plug was pulled on AI projects: “the leaders were disengaged from the project. They seemed paralyzed by the introduction of this new worker called AI. They couldn’t express how and why AI would be useful to achieving the goals of the company.”

AI’s rapid growth, he writes, “puts leaders in the awkward position of learning to adapt while at the same time learning what they’re adapting to.”

As a result, “leaders are less confident about what they think their role should be when adopting AI.” At the same time, their employees and colleagues are expecting more — much more. “They expect their leaders to be proactive in the use of governance of AI, to the purpose of making their employee work more efficiently.”

Lack of understanding about AI actually leads to a sense of inadequacy among business leaders, De Cremer states. “These feeling of inadequacy keeps them from becoming actively involved in leading their organization’s AI journey.”

Executives in De Cremer’s advanced leadership classes at Northeastern “feel so much pressure on AI that some wonder aloud if they need to transform themselves into professional coders to be effective leaders on AI,” he relates.

The answer is no, business leaders don’t have to become AI experts, “but need to understand that they need to be just AI-savvy enough to recognize its benefits,” De Cremer advocates. This consists of identifying opportunities in the workflow of teams and their projects and staying on top of developments in the AI field.

To advance both executive and staff understanding of AI, promote in-house workshops and on-the-job training, he urges. Invite experienced industry peers, professors, and consultants to lead such learnings.

Importantly, to successfully lead AI efforts, it’s essential that leaders make it their mission to promote AI as a way to help people work better — not automate them out of their jobs, De Cremer says. Do business leaders see AI “as a way to automate tasks, thereby augmenting human abilities so that we can take up newly designed jobs, but not as a way to replace us altogether? I’m not so sure.” Unfortunately, he adds, many see AI as an augmentation strategy, versus replacement, as “too expensive and risky.”

“What would be the value of a business world where humans eventually have nothing to do besides mindlessly following the same streamlined operations that AI follows? What would happen if an organization went through a volatile industry changes that require workers who can think creatively, participate actively in innovation, and interact with customers with empathy?”

This calls for a high degree of emotional intelligence as well as technology prowess on the part of leader. “Accept that soft skills are the new hard skills and practice them,” says De Cremer. “To be an AI-savvy leader, invest in the development of your own emotional intelligence skills. You need to transcend the template of the technology manager and start behaving as the transformational and human-driven strategies that organizations involved in AI adoption need.”