Enterprise Adoption of GenAI Capabilities: a Playbook

In 2017, I wrote Artificial Intelligence for Marketing, Practical Applications about Machine Learning - what we now refer to as traditional AI. That book is a great primer for understanding AI, but it definitely needs an update.

The update is about Generative AI . Most companies want to integrate generative AI into process, products, and services but are struggling to figure out how, where, when to use it, what policies and guidelines to create around it, how to train everybody, and how to get the most benefit out of it.

That's what this Integrating Generative AI presentation is all about. This is not about building your own Large Language Model or data science or prompt engineering. This is not about the existential threat to the human race. This is about an organization taking clearly identified steps to get the most benefit out of generative AI as possible.

Here's the outline:

1. Organization Survey
2. Executive Alignment
3. AI Council
4. Policies and Guidelines
5. Training
6. Actually Integrating GenAI into Process, Produces and Services
7. Measuring the Value of Gen AI

1. Organization Survey

Where are we now? This is situational awareness. This is surveying your organization to find out what's happening at the moment. Your people are using generative AI - probably in stealth mode - and they are learning valuable lessons that should be captured and shared, but they are also learning bad habits that should be identified and rectified.

2. Executive Alignment.

What do your senior executives know? What do they believe? What worries them? What do they hope for? ?

Getting them to agree on a vision is central to everybody's success. This is really a corporate culture question. Some companies are focused on security and safety and are happy to be late to the table because they don't want to make any mistakes. Other companies want to fail fast and learn quick. Everybody else is in the middle - we want to move forward - we don't want to get left behind, but we don't want to be reckless.

?3. Assemble an AI Council

These are the people who are interested in AI. They have already stepped up and raised their hands and said, I need this now! What am I allowed to do? Bring these bright sparks together because they'll be excited to be the ones keeping their fingers on the pulse of where generative AI is going and how people are using it.

This working group is going to be made up of executives and management and frontline people who are actively using the tools. Your frontline people who are actively using the tools actually know more than senior executives. They actually know more about practical applications than the IT department because IT is focused on how to make it work and keep it safe while frontline staff are figuring out how does it help them do the work.

?4. Policies and Guidelines

The AI Council is going to work with management and legal and IT security to figure out where the guardrails are. We need traffic cops and seat belts and airbags yes - and the generative AI industry is working feverishly on that side of things. But we also need the rules of the road and speed limits will differ from company to company.

?5. Training

Once policies and guidelines are in place, we can move on to Step 5 which is Training. There needs to be a plan to train everybody in the company. It is as if desktop computers arrived on everybody's desk all at once. Crazy. It's like smartphones suddenly arrived in everybody's hands. all on the same day.

?Today, everybody has access to large language models. Everybody has already been using them - in stealth mode. Training is crucial because we want people to get the most value from these tools without using them inappropriately and that means training in keeping with policies and guidelines that align with the company's values, and ethics, and objectives. And it needs to be an organic training program to keep up with advances in the technology.

6. Actually Integrating GenAI into Process, Produces and Services

Adopting generative AI capabilities depends on people understanding what it is, what it can do, and how not to use it.

Integrating generative AI into processes, products and services is an existential necessity. This is bigger than needed to build a website in the 1990's. This is the heavy lift. This is where the most value will be derived.

Cranking out all kinds of copy and images, summarizing long documents and meetings, outlining execution plans - there is massive value to be there - certainly. But the magic happens when people start sharing how they are using generative AI creatively for Strategy. Research and development, innovation, and critical thinking.

7. Measuring the Business Value of Gen AI

We want to know what types of projects have been the most successful, what methods generate the best output ... And socializing internal and external best practices and new-found use cases back into the company.

Stay Tuned

How does an organization make this happen? I'm going to walk through each of these seven steps in future posts to give you a methodology - a way forward, starting with a roadmap.

And - of course - I would be delighted to help you personally by providing workshops and moderating working groups and sharing information that I've gleaned from other companies they're going through the same process.

And for those looking to get started right away, please get in touch here on LinkedIn or via email and we can talk about getting you to the next level of generative AI adoption.