Fast-Track Visionary Thinking To Win At AI

“Where will we be able to go tomorrow?”

That’s the big question leaders need to ponder when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI). Answering this question requires visionary thinking, a new core leadership competency . The leaders who can look beyond the current capabilities of AI and reenvision how their business operates, what and how it offers products and services, and how their teams do work will be able to use the full disruptive power of the technology. Those who can’t will be left behind.

Take ChatGPT. When it first debuted, everyone talked about the tool in the context of writing student papers or blog posts. “If you stop there, you miss the potential of the other things ChatGPT can do in a business setting,” says Joseph Ours, MBA , the lead of Centric Consulting ’s?AI Strategy practice . “Visionary thinking is what made the leap from using ChatGPT for student papers to writing emails, RFPs and other business content. People sometimes get stuck in the specifics of a new technology and don’t generalize and apply it elsewhere.”

Luckily, visionary thinking isn’t necessarily an innate skill. Here’s how to unleash visionary thinking at your organization:

Embark on a rapid learning journey. You can’t be a visionary thinker around AI if you don’t understand the technology. You don’t need to become an expert, but you do need a baseline understanding of what the technology is, what it’s capable of, how it applies to your industry, and how it’s likely to continue developing.

Make a plan to quickly get up to speed. According to Josh Kaufman, best-selling author of The First 20 Hours, you only need 20 hours to become reasonably good at something. Carve out some time for a mini crash course in AI – can you set aside some time over a weekend or a few hours a day over a week or two?

Adjacent industries can be a huge source of inspiration. “If you see AI applied in another context, can you find a corollary in your business setting?” Ours asks. “How can you take what’s already out there and use it to transform your industry?”

He shares an example from the agriculture field, which uses computer vision to sort produce. “Where else could you use computer vision to detect and sort? It’s a bit of a leap, but could a construction site use the technology to determine if people are wearing safety equipment to help manage your safety risk? The idea that you could take AI from one area and apply it to another, it’s that leap that’s the visionary thinking.”

Create an AI think tank. Visionary thinkers rarely stand alone. You need to tap into the expertise and experiences of the smart people around you. Create an AI think tank made up of a diverse group of people – and don’t limit it to the technologists at your organization. Great ideas can come from unexpected places. Pixar, for instance, regularly pulls employees outside of the writing and animation teams to provide feedback on its films.

Darren Rehrer , head of Centric’s Business Strategy division , recommends using a tool such as the Hermann Brain Diagnostic to ensure you’re getting diversity of thought in the room. The Hermann Brain Diagnostic identifies four different types of thinkers: analytical, sequential, interpersonal, and imaginative. By categorizing your think tank group with this kind of tool, you can ensure you’re not creating an echo chamber.

“Know how you think, how others think, and who you have on your team. You want to have a balance of the four thinking types and be aware of what type will be most useful during each stage of ideation,” Rehrer says. “In the beginning, you want to skew a little toward the imaginative thinkers to get the most ideas. Then, when you’re assessing the feasibility of your ideas, you’ll want to be sure to add in more analytical and sequential thinkers.”

Tap outside help. A skilled facilitator can make a brainstorming exercise even more worthwhile. When my company, Centric Consulting, helps clients figure out how to use AI, we typically start with an AI visioning workshop. After a quick educational session on the relevant capabilities of AI, we leverage design thinking techniques to get the ideas flowing.

Something as simple as using “imagine if” and “imagine when” statements can be a powerful way to bust out of routine thinking and suss out what you’re really trying to solve. No idea is a bad idea when brainstorming. The whole point of the endeavor is to get your brain thinking in new ways.

A third party helping envision your future with AI can also connect you with resources to stay informed on the latest AI developments and help you move through the innovation funnel from idea to execution.

Start with the problem you want to solve. What are your current challenges and goals? What are your customers’ challenges and goals? Start there, going value stream by value stream to ideate ways AI can transform your business.

This tactic proved a success with Centric client What Chefs Want!, a wholesale food distributor that wanted to get a jumpstart on using AI to continue being a market disrupter. An AI vision workshop produced more than 40 ideas for the organization. “We had to help them break out of their current tools and processes and think of a new way to do things,” Ours says. “Once we freed their thinking from their current constraints, the ideas really started flowing.”

Act now. Generating ideas and a vision for AI is only the beginning. “You need to marry up the creative brainstorming ideas with problems you actually need to solve – which ones are feasible and worth the investment?” Ours says. “It’s great to have ideas, but not everyone is going to generate something real.”

As AI continues to advance rapidly, this exercise in visionary thinking needs to become ingrained into standard operations. The goal is to reach a state of continuous learning, ideation, and testing of new concepts. “AI is going to constantly change. There’s going to be new models, new capabilities, new solutions,” Ours says. “It’s important to continue asking what you can do differently in the future with AI.”