Strategies for successfully integrating an AI practice into your org
Welcome to Part 6 of our comprehensive 6-part series, Beyond Buzzwords: Finding your Purpose for AI , a collaboration by Noelle Saldana with Martina Hodges-Schell, product innovation and transformation expert
Integrating an AI practice successfully into your organization is a journey and an investment. The integration is prone to failure as organizations do not hire realistic minimum viable teams and do not often set this new organization up for success. Instead, they often simply install one person, often in a vacuum, and hope for the magic to happen. Don’t let this be you!
Usually, the focus is on producing results. The inconvenient truth is that AI is a complex problem-solving, creative, collaborative endeavour, and results aren’t linear.
Problem-solving is not a linear, predictable process. Instead, it offers a proven approach to navigating uncertainty and exploring possibilities productively. This illustration was inspired by Damien Newman’s design squiggle.
As you move forward with making AI an integral part of your organization, it’s critical to consider both who will be involved (the team and culture) and how they will operate (the strategy). Let’s look at each in more detail.
Team & Culture: How big a team do you need?
To determine a realistic team size, you need to consider the different capabilities and expertise necessary for your AI team and the surface area and complexity of the scope.
Ask yourself, truthfully, what’s the readiness of your organization? What do you need to invest in to be able to leverage a high-performing AI team? Realistically, how much time and effort will that take?
You’ll need a technical leader who can prioritize the AI work to be able to make progress, and can evaluate what they need to say no to instead.
This leader needs to be empowered to set up this team for success:
What does a lean, dedicated, collaborative, yet critical mass team look like? What skills do you need?
How does this team need to work to deliver best practice value? How does that best integrate with other teams and ways of working?
What current behaviors and habits hinder the success of this team? What needs to change culturally across the organization?
Strategy: How this new team operates
The AI team will work at odds with other teams’ priorities if they are not properly integrated into the organization’s strategy, prioritizations, and decision-making. It is key to have a collaborative way of working cross-functionally in general, but also very specifically for AI to have the desired impact.
Consider: How do you need to adapt your ways of working, decision-making, and measuring and rewarding progress now that you are invested in AI? This is not as simple as adding your new AI person to all the meetings, but fully integrating new and existing work streams together. This is a lot of strategic work that will look different for every company.
What does it mean to be an integrated AI org? We’ll wrap up this series with a final checklist that will help you address the hard questions and get the most out of your AI investment.
Are all goals aligned to strategic priorities and all teams incentivised to succeed by working together?
How are you updating strategic priorities to integrate this new AI work?
How does the AI practice represent itself and influence strategy and execution in the organization?
How do funding, prioritization, and decision-making enable the AI practice?
By the way, if this topic and way of framing is new, you might also want to read more about transforming your operating model.
What’s next?
Anytime you’re exploring new possibilities, it’s critical to keep in mind that success isn’t about predictable and immediate results. it’s not about setting a new team up in a silo to come up with a magical solution on their own—your goal is to integrate and support any new function.
If all this sounds like hard work, that’s because it is! But remember, the alternative is investing time and resources in projects or teams that have minimal chances of success.
Finally, we’d like to remind you that you don’t have to do it alone. We help support teams and individuals on their transformation journeys, so don’t hesitate to get in touch (here or here) if you’d like to discuss how we might work together.
This is part 6 in the series. Catch up on previous posts:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 3: Is the product you’re building a good candidate for AI?
Part 5: Your AI Investment = (AI Needs) + (the necessary team)
Part 6: Strategies for successfully integrating an AI practice into your org