In my blog last week, I framed the critical need for a Board Director and CEO to build an AI Brain Trust. I also introduced an AI leadership framework. I have now further evolved the leadership framework, based on discussions with other leading AI Experts. The framework identifies 40 leadership competencies, ranging from strategic to technical skills, and includes a set of discovery questions to help board directors and CEOs develop their AI leadership brain trust in their organizations. AI literacy must have a holistic approach. Organizations that are striving to develop sustaining AI programs must ensure they develop all the required skills to identity, design, develop, implement and sustain AI initiatives, in order to modernize effectively and efficiently. Anything less will only erode an organization’s value realization of AI.
The AI leadership framework (below) will evolve over the next two to three months from more rigorous research. This blog completes a deeper dive into four of the strategic skill areas: vision and strategic orientation, customer centricity focus, channel and partner relationship management, and innovation maker skills. What is key for each skill area is ensuring leaders ask their organizations, where they stand in relationship to each of the strategic skill domains profiled.
Over the next few months, I will continue to expand the AI skill framework with new questions until each skill domain has been completed, and the comprehensive list of all the insight questions will be brought together in a final blog entry on this AI leadership skill series.
STRATEGIC SKILLS:
- Vision and Strategic Orientation (Discovery): Where does AI fit in your organization? Where could AI take your organization? What are your competitors doing in AI? Could AI disrupt your current business model?
- Customer Centricity Focus (Discovery): What problems are your customers trying to solve? Could AI help them solve their problems? How could you bring AI knowledge to help your customers modernize to use AI? What new products/solutions could you develop to help your customers achieve their goals?
- Channel /Partner Relationship Management: (Discovery): Are your channel and partner relationships clearly defined, segmented and prioritized? Of the channels that are prioritized, do you understand what their AI strategy is to advance their organization? Have you developed a relationship with their head of advanced analytics or AI to share best practices and ensure your organization is demonstrating value and vice versa? Do you understand what AI use cases that your tier one channel partners are solving? Are there areas that your organization can bring additional skills and competencies to bear to strengthen your channel and partner relationships in using AI to create a unique competitive advantage?
- Innovation Maker (Incremental and Breakthrough) (Discovery): Given there are two forms of innovations, incremental (building off existing capabilities, often referred to as continuous improvement), or breakthrough (developing a unique, large scale, and potentially disruptive approach to your current business model, practices, etc.), have you stratified your AI use cases into incremental innovations (smaller scale) versus breakthrough (larger scale)? Are your innovation initiatives evenly distributed or skewed or are they synergistic supporting AI advancements from different perspectives which over the long term will yield higher value outcomes? Have you recently evaluated your current talent pool to determine their strength in innovation skills (both incremental and breakthrough)? How strong is your culture in embracing new technologies that are more difficult to understand and be patient for iterative exploration and being accepting of failed experiments? Do you formally measure innovation as a core leadership principle? Is innovation capacity one of your corporate values? Are you investing in ongoing training and development to support the growth of innovation capacity and skill development? Are you measuring the results of your AI programs in terms of their innovation value contributions?
- Talent Builder (Attract, Develop, Retain) (Discovery)
- Governance and Cross-Functional Stewardship
- Strategic Process Value Chains
- Financial Value Realization
- Strategic Transformation Management Maker
- Focus Management (Prioritization Rigour in the Age of Distraction).
BUSINESS SKILLS:
- Customer Orientation
- Problem Solving Orientation
- Analytical and Research Rigour
- Communication /Channel Relevance (social, written, voice, etc.)
- Ethical & Regulatory Robustness (Transparency, Trust, Privacy)
- Program and Project Management
- Process & Data Management Orientation
- Measurement – Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
- Finance and Business
- Sustainability Robustness (Environment, Human and Societal Well Being)
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE/SOCIAL SKILLS
- Curiosity to Explore (Experiment)
- Listening to Diverse Opinions and Suspending Judgement
- Openness and Collaborative Team Orientation
- Inclusiveness, Diversity Empathy and Kindness
- Coaching and Consultative Orientation
- Flexibility to Work under Changing Conditions and Contradictions
- Adaptability & Resilience
- Immersive Learning (Learning and Re-Learning)
- Reflection and Renewal
- Health and Wellness
TECHNICAL SKILLS:
- Research Methods Literacy
- Agile Methods Literacy
- User-Centric Design Literacy
- Data Analytics Literacy
- Digital Literacy (Cloud, SaaS, Computers, etc.)
- Mathematics Literacy
- Statistics Literacy
- Sciences (Computing Science, Complexity Science, Physics) Literacy
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) Literacy
- Sustainability Literacy
In summary, if you have any thoughts on this list of skills to enable the organization of the future to use Artificial Intelligence more effectively, I welcome your ideas. Please do reach out to my link in at Dr. Cindy Gordon, and I sincerely look forward to your additional thoughts. Stay tuned for more perspectives on the skills needed to modernize and enable an AI Brain Trust.
originally posted on forbes.com by Cindy Gordon
About Author: Dr. Cindy Gordon is a CEO, a thought leader, author, keynote speaker, board director, and advisor to companies and governments striving to modernize their business operations, with advanced AI methods. She is the CEO and Founder of SalesChoice, an AI SaaS company focused on Improving Sales Revenue Inefficiencies and Ending Revenue Uncertainty. A former Accenture, Xerox, and Citicorp executive, she bridges governance, strategy, and operations in her AI contributions. She is a board advisor of the Forbes School of Business and Technology and the AI Forum. She is passionate about modernizing innovation with disruptive technologies (SaaS/Cloud, Smart Apps, AI, IoT, Robots), with 13 books in the market, with the 14th on The AI Split: A Perfect World or a Perfect Storm to be released shortly. Follow her on Linked In or on Twitter or her Website. You can also access her at The AI Directory.
