HBR Guide to AI Basics for Managers by Harvard Business Review. The ‘HBR Guide’ series offers articles addressed in multiple sections. This is not a single author’s interpretation.
Published in January 2023 this Guide is critical for managers regardless of organization, vertical market, or seniority within executive teams. In fact, prior to the pandemic AI had already shifted the fundamentals of business and society. Many to this day never saw it coming and this Guide is mandatory.
While business as usual is often overstated, our post pandemic world shifted so rapidly and radically, that organizations will simply fail if they do not adopt. In more and more business cases, the adopt or die mindset will continue to become painfully evident as consolidation, mergers, acquisitions and divestitures (MAD) only accelerate via AI solutions.
For managers the Introduction is aiming squarely at your future: How AI Will Redefine Management is not to be taken lightly. However in the presented articles the adoption of which cannot be overstated, miss the fundamentals of AI changing your organization, and you might as well begin refreshing your resume. For the CEO or President, this will empower you to drive change long desired but slowed by organization’s noise. And you will have to address your supporters, detractors and fence sitters to get the AI ball rolling.
Look no further than news headlines of upstart companies challenging long time industry titans and succeeding. All due to the smart adoption of AI services that cut costs and quickly accelerate the aggressive companies who not only understand the key concepts but also fully understand how AI automation will allow the Davids to defeat their Goliaths.
Make a solid first step: identify the right project
This is only possible however by managers who can accurately identify the right AI projects to empower their employees’ workflows. Once understood even within early deployments, the ability of managers to scale AI services further across their organization will only result in building a team that can overcome your organization’s most pressing challenges.
Pick’em with help
For all managers who are completely new to AI tools, the smartest decisions by your leadership will be to tap into employees and consultants who can help accelerate early phase projects. Along the way organization need to address ethical issues and even stand up an organization wide Ethics committee or working group. This can help divert well publicized outcomes of AI bias: Look no further than Microsoft’s own AI tool which confirmed their tool’s AI racial profiling: Microsoft Is Scrapping Some Bad A.I. Facial Recognition Tools.
As damning as this was for Microsoft, it was predictable. However, you must fully understand why. Perhaps one solid outcome will be learning how to plan for inevitable mistakes made by your AI tool. Look no further than Section Four: Working with AI – Article 5: Your Company’s Algorithms Will Go Wrong. Have a Plan in Place. This also brings into focus the need to tap machine learning experts and data scientists who have noted success within your vertical market.
Tap well respected experts
Above all, this Guide is tapping the respected insights from Tom Davenport, Eric Siegel, Andrew Ng and Hillary Mason who author the following articles:
Section One: AI Fundamentals – Article 3: Three types of AI
Section One: AI Fundamentals – Article 4: AI Doesn’t Have to Be Too Complicated or Expensive for Your Business
Section Two: Building your AI Team – Article 1: How AI Fits into Your Data Science Team
Section Two: Building your AI Team – Article 2: Ramp Up Your Team’s Predictive Analytics Skills
Section Four: Working with AI – Article 5: Your Company’s Algorithms Will Go Wrong. Have a Plan in Place.
In conclusion, managers should not concern themselves with writing algorithms. This book delivers a great introduction to AI with broad brushstrokes. In addition, this does not dive deep into the weeds of algorithms. Simply a must read. Actually, IMHO a necessary re-read with note taking.