The DEI advantage in the age of AI: A CIO's View

91% of C-Suite executives have expressed that their organizations are currently leveraging or have imminent plans to embrace Generative AI (GAI) within the next 18 months. As GAI captures the imagination of business leaders, it’s important to understand that the key to extracting value from this technology does not lie solely in its technical aspects. It also hinges significantly on the capabilities of the human workforce that interacts with and trains it. Diverse and inclusive teams, encompassing a range of personal and professional backgrounds, will be better positioned to eliminate bias, fuel innovation, and create greater value for their organizations.?

But the reality is, for too long, we’ve taken a band-aid approach to DEI. Almost transactional, as if checking off a list. Without delving into the root cause of the issue. This fact was brought home to me during a recent breakfast in New York with a great friend of mine. When I reiterated my belief that "DEI is going to be the most important factor driving organizational success today," she responded with a series of ‘why’ questions, starting with Why is DEI the most important success factor in business today?

She went on to explain that the challenges businesses face with DEI today stem largely from the insufficient emphasis in the early stages of our lives. Throughout our school and college experiences, there is often a lack of thoughtful and structured exposure to DEI, hindering meaningful impact. Introducing children to DEI from an early age, and consistently emphasizing these values throughout their formative years and into adulthood, can foster a heightened sense of acceptance and openness to diverse individuals and novel ideas.?

I firmly believe that addressing DEI comprehensively does indeed require creating the kind of holistic, grassroots efforts that my friend suggested. This is important work that all of us can support to create the kinds of opportunities, large-scale acceptance, and systematic changes necessary to get there. This work will take some time, however, requiring us to engage our communities, educational institutions, governments, and businesses to achieve the ultimate goal. That leaves us with a problem that we want to begin addressing in the short term. That leaves individual leaders with a difficult nut to crack. What can we do?

As an ardent advocate of AI in the workplace, I’ve relied on two major elements to drive success thus far. One is disruption – identifying disruptive ways to leverage AI to drive high-impact outcomes. The second is networking – learning from peers and industry leaders to devise effective solutions based on what has worked well for them.

With DEI being critical for effective success as I have already stated, it's essential to incorporate a third element into the mix: Maintaining a strong internal focus. By leveraging your own emotional, mental, and spiritual pillars, you can better drive external outcomes such as diversity, sustainability, and innovation. What I'm saying is that as we are intentional with our core values and focused on the human element of what we do, we organically find ourselves prioritizing the human elements of diversity, sustainability, and thoughtful innovation. We engage with a broader set of employees, colleagues, and customers to ensure that broad representation is achieved. This broad representation in turn directs the GAI in a more inclusive direction. Ultimately, when our AI is trained by a broad set of individuals, we are essentially building the DEI element from the “birth” of the GAI as is recommended for humans above. We address the problem on a smaller, virtual scale while working for the systematic changes that will translate into better outcomes for our workforce and customer base.

Emotional intelligence – practicing optimism, self-acceptance, and vulnerability – is foundational to successfully leading diverse global teams. Leaders with a high Emotional Quotient (EQ) create more diverse and inclusive teams that foster collaboration, out-of-the-box thinking, and innovation. Leading businesses already understand this.? 70% of Fortune 500 companies are setting aside budgets to train people in emotional intelligence.

79% of employees in a recent survey said the example of leadership influences mental health in the workplace. So, what can leaders do to show the way? How can they turn into role models, focusing on their mental health as well as their team’s, in turn, helping ignite creativity and maintain a healthy work-life balance? Meditation, mindfulness, and self-mastery are some practices that I plan to focus on in 2024 and beyond to help me achieve this.

As the world battles job stress and economic uncertainties, my idea of spirituality centers around intentionally focusing on empathy, care, integrity, and kindness. This translates into not only welcoming people of diverse backgrounds into my team but also helping them understand their purpose in the organization, mentoring and coaching them, to help them achieve higher personal and professional goals as they navigate their life and career.

As businesses wake up to the vast potential of GAI in 2024, my wish is that the upcoming year is filled with meaningful and purposeful endeavors, with humans (from diverse backgrounds) at the heart of AI.