Who’s Guiding AI Adoption?
I have no problem saying unequivocally that "Yeah, I used AI extensively" in my most recent role as VP of Marketing & Comms at a very large insurance brokerage.
📣 And I was upfront about it - with my bosses and my team.
In fact, I actively encouraged my team to use it for certain lower impact and lower risk tasks that had to be completed frequently, so they could focus on bigger picture, more strategic tasks that would generate faster and more profitable growth. We developed workflows to review each other's work and protect the company.
We were only four individuals with a huge remit, we HAD TO figure out how to do more with less, and NOT burn out. There was no other choice.
As employee owners, it was even more crucial that my team and I figure out a way to use AI smartly because we had an obligation to every one of our colleagues to maximize the company's income and EBITDA so that our share price would increase year after year, enriching everyone.
The problem for so many office workers today is what Korn Ferry points out in their latest newsletter "I Swear, I Didn’t Use AI." While companies are touting their artificial intelligence props to investors, to business partners, to anyone they want to impress, they're typically doing a poor job communicating to the people who need to hear about AI the most -- their employees AND people leaders.
Either way, a lack of guidance from most companies is creating a new source of AI anxiety. “It’s a really tricky situation,” says Louis Montgomery Jr., a principal in Korn Ferry’s Human Resources Center of Expertise, in the article. “It’s even more tricky when you don’t have any policies on approved ways to use AI.”
Tell me about it. The journey is so much harder when the powers that be don't provide you with a roadmap.
💻 How are you using AI in your role?
🧭 How well is your employer guiding you in incorporating AI safely and strategically?
🏆 How is your employer demonstrating the rewards to the company and to individual careers for adopting AI intelligently?
Our team had to produce a 60-second local radio spot every month, while I was managing a group of outside agencies and inside SMEs relaunching the company brand, rebuilding the company website and keeping the marketing and comms wheels on the bus.
Handing off that monthly obligation to AI gave me back at least 90 minutes a month. As the LLM learned more about the new branding language we were going to use, the tool was teaching itself to make our content even stronger across a range of platforms and channels.
It is incumbent on companies to give clear guidance to employees about how to use AI. As Bryan Ackermann, head of AI strategy and transformation at Korn Ferry, says in that same article, "People that lean heavily into AI can create space and capacity to add more value than those that do not."
That's smart business.