I have the privilege in my role of facilitating more than 20 strategic planning and alignment sessions a year with various senior teams, and the even greater privilege of raising three teenagers in the age of GenAI.
On some days, not unlike today’s political environment, I want to tune it all out because it feels like you’re either a blind evangelist or an intoxicated critic. So, I started to ask myself, based on my market experience, what conversations should I be facilitating with the CEO and their team? And how often is that the conversation being had?
Before we answer those two questions, let me declare my stance on this topic. I believe GenAI is the second transformative technology event that I can remember. If the first was the advent of the internet, which provided access to information at scale, I believe GenAI will provide real-time access to insight at scale and the technology to operationalize those insights quickly.
That being said, it is a how, not a what. It’s not what your business is trying to achieve, but how you achieve it. Talent and GenAI might be the most powerful “how” levers you have to create step-change in your business over the next few years.
Two Conversations Every Leadership Team Should Have
1. With what activity sets (call center routing & response, monthly close process, the development of marketing collateral) does GenAI enable us to do things smarter, faster, or cheaper?
Based on how those activities manifest themselves in our organization and industry do we want to go first, be in the middle, or go last?
The answer is probably not to go last. The median tenure of a Fortune 500 CEO is 4.8 years and shrinking. Nobody wants to explain to the street why they aren’t seeing the margin improvements of their peers because they decided to go last. I believe the use of GenAI to enable these activity sets will become the norm; it’s just a question of timing and quality of execution.
2. Where can GenAI drive strategic differentiation?
Let’s say your business is vertically integrated and you have consumer-facing data that competitors lack. One trend I’m noticing is a much greater focus on hyper consumer segmentation, which requires high-quality, actionable data. You may be able to leverage GenAI to harvest consumer insights and tailor product offerings to segments your top competitors can’t replicate because they lack a B2C interface and data set.
The answer to this question isn’t simple, because there’s no clear roadmap for success yet. But this is the conversation your leadership team should be having.
Why Isn’t This Conversation Happening?
More often than not, GenAI experts speak a different language than the CEO. They talk about AI strategy.
When I was president of a small company, we didn’t have an AI strategy or a workforce strategy. We had an enterprise growth strategy. I expected functions to help create the link between their priorities and that growth strategy.
The functional “strategy” exists to enable the business strategy. But too often, functional leaders don’t understand the business strategy deeply enough, business executives have little patience to bring them along, and the language of the functional leaders feels theoretical and disconnected from real application.
The Next Generation Is Already Living It
The mean age of a Fortune 500 CEO is 57.7 years old. Most don’t have teenagers at home doing homework with AI, making social videos with AI, and asking what’s possible with AI. I feel fortunate to be raising teenagers in the age of AI because they’ve accelerated my own learning journey.
If you’re a CEO whose kids are grown up, my advice is simple: have the grandkids over for a sleepover. In addition to priceless memories, it might just help you win in the marketplace.
If you want to lead successfully in the age of AI, ask yourself:
- Where can GenAI make us smarter, faster, or cheaper?
- Where can GenAI help us achieve strategic differentiation?
- And maybe most importantly, how do we entice our teenage grandkids to spend the weekend with us?
