How Can We Find the Upside to Disruption?

Once upon a time, disruption became synonymous with radical change. Corporations struggling to cope with Asian competition rushed to reinvent how they thought, planned and operated. Disruption was king.

Until it wasn’t.

Companies that embraced it realized that disruption was not something to be cherished with the new and out with the old sent shudders throughout the organization.?

Terence Mauri understands that mantra, and in his new book,?The Upside of Disruption: The Path to Leading in the Unknown , he recasts what must change and what must remain the same.

Explore the future.

As a futurist and relentless experimenter with AI, Mauri knows what organizations must do to make the future work for them, not against them.?As he discussed in a recent interview ,?“Will AI be a disruptor or a democratizer? Will AI be an enabler or some type of dystopian Gollum mining us of our humanity?”

Mauri argues that it is important to use AI to unleash our brainpower.?"Using AI intelligently, we create what's called ROI, which is not just return on investment but a new human metric for a post-AI world return on intelligence."

What does it mean to unlearn as it relates to disruption? While we all feel overwhelmed and discouraged by the volumes of data, Mauri says, "The upside could be a better way of doing things—a healthier way, a more sustainable way, a chance to reimagine, a chance to rethink.”?

“Imagine that you are in an organization and you're spending less than 30% of your time on bureaucratic work and 70% of time on intelligent work. Right now, the ratio is the opposite. Research shows that most people are spending 70% of their week on bureaucratic outcomes at the expense of intelligent work, work that actually creates meaning and work that's creative and innovative.”

When considering which form of technology to pursue, Mauri posits the "billion dollar beliefs.” With such a target,?“you can prioritize a strategy, you can prioritize your leadership, your resource allocation around that.”

Find the right course.

"How do we harness AI in an ethical responsible and sustainable way? Asks Mauri. "My research at Hack Future Lab shows that data centers today [globally] consume over 5% of global electricity projections to 2030 could be 25%, and that's just not tenable. That's just one example of a potential risk we must mitigate now.”

Mauri says, “The worst thing we can do right now is just become more automated or use AI just to cut costs. I think we need to use it as a torture, be generative, and to achieve return on intelligence and return on imagination.”

Ensuring such an outcome takes work. It will take the collective efforts of individuals and organizations using AI to experiment and establish guidelines that improve productivity without degrading our humanity "to avoid artificial idiocy.”?

Finding possible solutions comes down to being inquisitive. “What questions do we need to be remembered for? What questions are not being asked that should be asked in terms of AI, what's not being said that should be said?”

Mauri suggests we ask ourselves the following questions. “How do we harness AI in a way that aligns with humanity, aligns with our employees on the inside, our teams, on the inside, and our stakeholders on the outside. How do we align AI to be true to our values?.. We want are three things, truth, transparency, and trust."?

Note: Readers can view my full LinkedIn Live interview with Terence Mauri?here .

First posted on Forbes.com 9.17.2024

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