AI for Organisational Orchestrators - Newsletter #8

Staccato provocation…

There’s a big risk in not being able to track the compound productivity improvements you are accruing through applying GenAI across business functions…

Hello Orchestrators!

Making snap decisions on organisational changes (investments, re-orgs, cuts) these days is a complex process because of the rate of change impacting jobs, workflows, functions and entire business models. The viral, and planned, spread of GenAI across teams is simultaneously automating formally manual tasks, and opening up new avenues for creativity. Recent studies also point to the fact that formally “less-skilled” workers benefit much more than “higher skilled” workers. This will continue to shift the organisational balance, meaning that Leaders and Boards should pause before making rash decisions.

It’s very likely that your organisation is spinning up new capabilities/skills in real-time, giving you options to open up new business opportunities. Also, the cost of layoff and recruitment cycles (including onboarding and time-to-productivity) can be considerable.

On the other hand, new employees coming into organisations should be GenAI’d-up, meaning you want to recruit people who are comfortable with the new norm. And a key question for established organisations is “are they far enough along the GenAI journey to be able to attract Gen Z who are LLM-native?”

Much to chew on. For now lets take a trawl through this weeks key headlines that caught my attention and are worthy of a few seconds of your precious time, dear Orchestrators!

In todays newsletter:

• Reinventors - a new buzzword to get comfortable with….or not.

• Compressing time and cost - CoPilots for Sales and other specialist functions.

• Top 150 GenAI tools…but who’s counting?

• Calling up GPTs into your prompts.

• Predicting the future of Marketing…its closer than you think.

• 5 questions for Organisational Orchestrators.

This weeks news:

• Accenture’s out with a use new set of insights titled “work, the workforce and workers: reinvented in the age of Generative AI”. There’s plenty to noodle on for employees, leaders and board members.

• Ever been frustrated with your sales process? Rhetorical. Now Microsoft is starting to release CoPilot’s addressing key functions, stringing together workflows in a more dynamic manner. Expect these to become the norm fast. The monthly subscription should be offset against the amount of time we all waste on old processes that already loose the organisations a ton of time, cost and potential revenue.

• FlexOS has released a useful report on the top 150 GenAI tools in use. Plenty to dive into. Of significant interest to Orchestrators should be #5: “A new generation is growing up with AI: Employers take note.”

• Productivity hacks continue to roll out on a weekly basis. A new one I’ve been playing with are GPT mentions, where you can call up multiple custom GPTs in a conversation. Here’s how… It’s being rolled out gradually, so if you don’t have it yet…be patient!

• I have a lot of Marketing friends and business acquaintances. Top of their agendas are balancing the opportunities and disruptions (depending on your mindset) that GenAI is bringing. I fuel-up on the latest insights each week from the “Marketing Against the Grain” YouTube channel. Here, the guys predict the future of CoPilots for Marketing.

5 (rolling) questions for Orchestrators:

1. How will our inability to quantify generative AI's impact on productivity place us at a strategic disadvantage compared to competitors who adapt and evolve with this technology?

2. In what ways are our current productivity metrics and assumptions becoming obsolete in light of generative AI advancements, and how can we overhaul these to better reflect new realities?

3. How do we plan to reassess and redefine the roles and skills within our teams to leverage generative AI effectively, preventing redundancy and promoting innovation?

4. What mechanisms are we lacking to capture real-time data and insights on generative AI's influence across our operations, and what steps can we take to bridge this gap?

5. Given the rapid evolution of generative AI, how can we shift from a reactive to a proactive stance in technology adoption, ensuring continuous learning and agility in our strategic planning?

Staccato Burst…

How quick are you in taking on risk, and taking it off the table? What’s your definition of risk given the productivity improvements accruing through your organisation…?

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