Future Ready Digest Vol.1 No.1

Welcome to the first of our bimonthly updates summarising the latest research and thinking on building future ready organisations. Please register to receive notifications of future Digests.

Summary of Vol. 1 No. 1 - Can AI automate strategy development?; is your organisation's strategy fit-for-purpose in an increasingly volatile and digital world?; leadership in the metaverse era; does bossless management work?; the business impact of ChatGPP; ban meetings?; Brian Solis on the brave new world of digital, business & leadership transformation; the Future Ready AI Chat Forum January 2023.

Artificial Intelligence in Strategy

Can machines automate strategy development? No, according to this recent podcast from McKinsey. However, there are numerous aspects of strategists’ work where AI and advanced analytics tools can already bring enormous value. These include helping executives avoid bias in decision-making, pulling insights out of oceans of data, and making strategic choices more quickly to mention just a few. The power of AI in strategy development will increase exponentially over the next few years.

Strategic Readiness for a Volatile World

Toolkit 1 in our Future Ready Series encourages you to undertake an honest self-evaluation of your organisation’s strategic readiness for a rapidly changing world. Your response to the ten questions, presented as an overall Scope for Improvement Score (Strategy), provides a strong foundation for developing a forward-thinking and forward-looking strategic blueprint for thriving in an era of pervasive uncertainty. You can try it out here . The other four toolkits in the series cover Organisation, People and Culture; Digital Mastery; Orchestration; and Leadership. Please contact us for more details.

Leadership in the Metaverse Era

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the new leadership approaches required in a post-pandemic world, an era of pervasive uncertainty. The emergence of the Metaverse in business will further disrupt traditional leadership styles. "In addition to becoming agile in their management style to adapt to the highly volatile environment, leaders will also have to recalibrate their risk tolerance and learn how to manage a new workforce by accepting employees' need for purpose and quality of life" according to this helpful primer covering new leadership approaches required in the Metaverse.

Can Bossless Management Work?

A book in support of bureaucracy? Well not quite, but it does question the thoughts of leading authors advocating new decentralized management approaches such as holacracy, humanocracy and agile. The book's authors refer to this as the 'bossless company narrative' - the idea that the visible hand of leaders and managers should give way to worker autonomy, self-organizing teams, outsourcing, and egalitarian office cultures. The book argues that "near-bossless companies, with their self-managing teams, empowered knowledge workers, and ultra-flat organizations are not generally or demonstrably better than traditionally organized ones." Thoughts?

Generative AI is Here: How Tools Like ChatGPT Could Change Your Business

Early business use case examples of Generative AI across five key value chain activities - Marketing & Sales; Operations; IT/Eng; Risk & Legal; HR; and Employee Optimisation, via McKinsey. "The innovations that generative AI could ignite for businesses of all sizes and levels of technological proficiency are truly exciting. However, executives will want to remain acutely aware of the risks that exist at this early stage of the technology’s development. It is essential that leaders encourage thoughtful innovation across the organization, standing up guardrails and sandboxed environments for experimentation leveraging tools already available on the cloud."

Just Say No to Meetings

“It’s much easier to add things than to remove things. If you say yes to a thing, you actually say no to every other thing you could have done with that period of time. As people add things, the set of things that can be done becomes smaller. Then, you end up with more and more people just maintaining the status quo.”?I would add to that - in an increasingly volatile, digital world maintaining the status quo is no longer an option. 18 hours per week in meetings?????

ChatGPT Banned from New York Schools

"Well, we got no choice. All the girls and boys. Makin' all that noise'. Cause they found new toys. Well, we can't salute ya. Can't find a flag. If that don't suit ya. That's a drag." Surely it's time for the education sector to move from its initial knee-jerk reaction to becoming future ready; leveraging the full potential of these new tools for enhancing the pupil/student learning experience.

The Brave New World Of Digital, Business, And Leadership Transformation

Always worth reading Brian Solis. "We can upgrade our ideas and plans around digital transformation to reimagine our organizations for an entirely different world, because that’s what it is. 2020 created a significant fissure in our trajectory. Some will batten down the hatches, minimize risk, and cut their way forward. Others will seize this moment and the shift in our trajectory to invent, innovate, and transform. The good news is that history is on the side of the latter. It is not just?digital?transformation, either. The time is now for operational?transformation, mindset?transformation, and?leadership?transformation. It’s a complete CTRL-ALT-DEL moment for ourselves and our companies."

The Future Ready AI Chat Forum January 2023

With the explicit knowledge that I need to get a life, some time was spent with ChatGPT over the festive period talking about the need for organisations to become future ready. A totally unedited version of the discussion is published below. Let me know what you think. If you would like to leave a comment or question I will ask my newly acquired friend to provide an answer. I hope that 2023 is a good one for you and yours.

Hope you found our first Future Ready Newsletter useful and interesting. As always, comments and feedback are very welcome.

Take care.

Jim H