How does Digital Empowerment enable us to harness the power of Personal AI to enhance human capabilities, drive purpose-driven growth, and foster a culture of continuous innovation?
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Empowering People with the Skills and Tools to Thrive in the AI Era
The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the way we work. [Download ‘The Personal AI Revolution’ PDF].
While ‘Enterprise AI’ (top-down, IT driven) provides significant benefits, its increasing commoditisation presents a challenge for organizations seeking to sustain competitive advantage through AI. Conversely, ‘Personal AI’ (bottom-up, people driven), with its emphasis on personal empowerment, creativity, and relational innovation, offers new opportunities for myriad service and efficiency enhancements. Digital Empowerment is the framework by which organisations and their people navigate this landscape, through the skills, tools, and mindset necessary to thrive in the emerging future.
And, if we thought the potential of Enterprise-AI was impressive, the potential of Personal-AI is incredible. It has the power to transform … everything! How we work, relate, learn, collaborate, sell, buy, inspire, innovate, relax, research, behave, design, fix, … but at an individual level, empowering each of us to become effective entrepreneurs of our own lives and work.Challenges of Digital Empowerment
However, it is already clear that we will not realise the full potential of ‘Personal AI’ organically. Despite its growth and popularity, most employees do not yet appreciate that potential or know how to access it. For many it has become a sort of ‘magical Google’, finding information sources more easily, and tailoring the result into useful documents, presentations, emails etc. For others it is a source of concern around bias, ethics, employment, change, even Armageddon; provoking an avoidance of, or resistance to its use. And, unless we get a grip on this, we are going to find ourselves mired in a conflict between lethargy and anarchy – neither of which will help us achieve that potential.
Core Components of Digital Empowerment
The evidence of most of the current articles and case-studies in this space indicate that there are a number of core components required to ensure that people are both engaged and empowered to realise their potential, and AI’s potential, together.
AI Literacy: Equipping people with the basic understanding and insight that enables them to master (and feel in control of) Personal-AI. To just theoretically, but through practice, experience, success, and the ‘wow’ that embeds it in place.
AI Toolkits: Curated recommendations of the best Personal-AI tools for various purposes, such as productivity, ideation, collaboration, research, and data analysis, including guidance on how to select the most appropriate tools.
AI Practices: Adopting simple methods and approaches to develop sequences of focused, dense and guiding prompts which deliver quality answers safely, ethically, and strategically. And which then refine, interpret and build on those answers.
these essentials are easy to address – especially with AI
Design Methods: Practice in rapid, collaborative methods like the Design Sprint to build effective collaborative use of AI, and ensure that AI innovations are effectively targeted, tested, agreed, and fit for purpose
Governance Models: Frameworks and oversight that build confidence in both the leadership and the employee base that innovations align with organisational goals, values and the needs of their colleagues and customers
AI Leadership: Ensuring that the leadership is effectively using the above in their own roles, and using their experience to coach, support and encourage their people’s digital progress
It is important to note, digital empowerment is not a technical issue. It is not about AI expertise, or advanced systems, or even knowing the details of LLMs and neural networks. The answers to all these things already exist and are readily available. It is a people issue. We are talking about change management, motivation, inspiration, education and simple frameworks to help direct people’s efforts at the ‘right things’ in the ‘right way’. It is fundamentally about strategy engagement.
Culturistics’ Approach
As with all our work, we start with an understanding of the client and their needs. This enables us to design an appropriate programme with the client that serves both the goals for the future, and their capacity for change. That said, we have found from experience that, because of the relative newness of Personal-AI, and its commonality everywhere, people in almost every organisation and situation exhibit the same range of responses and reactions to it. And we find that, irrespective of how we wrap it up, the core solution is simply about expanding people’s understanding of the true potential of what is already available to them, and equipping them with the understanding, confidence and enthusiasm for realising that potential.
Therefore, we have developed an adaptable series of training modules, based on the amazing AI Tinkerer’s card deck, and the Design Sprint methodology, to take people in groups, from 12 to 100 at a time (depending on the venue available), on a semi-competitive journey to develop and implement their first AI-enabled innovation within 2 days start to finish. At the end of which, people are not only skilled AI entrepreneurs, they also have a track record which already pays for their time and training.Providing Context
What we wrap around the core training depends on the client needs and situation. But there are a number of possibilities to consider:
- How we design and implement the supporting Governance Models, and how these will impact the various tools and approaches
- How we equip and support the leadership in their own role (individual and collective) in guiding, coaching, supporting and encouraging their people in AI, and in managing the performance outcomes
These are, in practice, the two most important things. With them and the core training, we can assure our success. There are however a number of other things that might be considered over time that can leverage people’s application of Personal-AI by providing clearer organisational context. These are of course the other key elements of effective Strategy Engagement:
- An adventurous vision to inspire, drive and guide AI
- Frameworks for better harnessing AI innovations into the organisational strategy
- Adjusting the culture to better support AI empowerment
- Adopting leadership practices that fit with such empowerment
Let us know if you would like to explore how Digital Empowerment can transform your organization. We find our own thinking is continually sharpened and enriched by the questions people ask, and by the discussions that emerge from it.
To talk through how this might work for your organisation, please contact us.