AI for Orchestrators - Newsletter #17

The latest AI insights for Business Leaders and Organisational Orchestrators.

Staccato provocation…

Move…

Hello Business Orchestrators!

In this weeks newsletter:

Businesses are living organisms; there’s a lot of flow in and around them:

Some things we do in business - discuss, decide, buy, sell, ideate, instruct, negotiate, design, build, plan, evaluate, fire, hire, organise, train, support, help, communicate, compete, collaborate…

How we do some things in business - speak, listen, watch, read, write, analyse, meet, search, calculate, project forward, look backwards, pattern recognition, guess…

Where we do some of these things - individually, in teams, across workflows, with clients, partners, external services, regulators, up and down hierarchies…

Some context examples against which we do things - market(s), organisation, product, culture, regulatory, technological, economic, political, stakeholder, timescale, cost, competitive, alliance…

Some of the Potential in what we do - capacity, productivity, revenue, margin, OPEX, CAPEX, budget, re-think investment/resourcing, quality, adjacent, business model, explore, level-up, upgrade, accelerate…

Existing businesses leveraging (good word) evolving human talent applying generative AI across flows of work are transforming all of the above.

Considerations - can you capture the value at scale? What’s possible in 4 months given the pace of new LLM capabilities? What old assumptions are holding you back? How does freeing up capacity in your existing headcount translate into revenue or margin growth? How is the profile of new hires changing? What about GenAI-first new companies that are spinning-up to attack your incumbency with 5% of your workforce?…

Lets dive into some of the weeks headlines that could be on your radars, dear Orchestrators, as you give me 5 minutes of your valuable time!

This weeks attention grabbers:

• “AI is already changing management - companies must decide how” - or is that the other way round? Here’s a good piece in the FT from Ethan Mollick.

• Talking of which; the FT 2024 “Executive Education Rankings” are out. There’s a storm coming in that industry. Check out the OpenAI ChatGPTo demo with Sal Khan and his son…then project outwards.

• AI Agents given personalities and backgrounds by Researchers and let loose in a virtual organisation with CEOs and VPs of this and that in this intriguing simulation (LinkedIn).

• “What a waste of time - the real productivity crisis” - the FT.

• Apparently, economists believe new “non-automated” roles will be created faster than the LLMs/LAMs expand outwards in capability. Here’s the Guardian. Advanced simulation capabilities needed, combined with more fractional job roles…?

• Here’s VentureBeat on a recent study of the future of Financial Analysis courtesy of the University of Chicago.

• Shadow IT on the rise (CIO Dive) as employees and teams grab hold of the latest productivity capabilities offered by LLMs, causing headaches for the CIO and others. Meanwhile, not all employees are opening up about how much the GenAI tools are helping them in their jobs. Square that circle…

• The build-out of data centres to fuel the AI flywheel is causing a surge in emissions. Here’s the Taipei Times on it.

• Underwater data centres are part of the solution (it’s cool and there’s power from currents, waves and wind), but they come with their own security and maintenance challenges (University of Florida news).

• The UK government just released an updated “International Scientific report on the Safety of Advanced AI” here.

5 questions for Organisational orchestrators:

1. How can AI boost our capacity and productivity at all levels, and how do we capture and share it?

2. What impact can AI have on our revenue and margins?

3. How should we rethink investment and resourcing with AI?

4. What new business models can AI help us explore?

5. How does management keep up with the latest AI capabilities, deliver on existing customer and stakeholder commitments, and fight off GenAI-first teams attacking their incumbency?

Staccato Burst…

Faster…

That’s all for this week. If you’re curious you can also check out more insights from Gaoithe.biz and The Nordic Bridge on YouTube, on the organisational implications from applying (or not applying) GenAI.