Artificial Intelligence (AI) has undeniably captured the world’s imagination, propelling it to the pinnacle of its hype cycle. Businesses across industries are scrambling to understand how to leverage AI to gain a competitive edge. However, amidst the excitement, it’s essential to navigate through the noise and identify the real value that AI can bring to organizations.
To avoid falling victim to the hype, let’s consider three potential distractions and draw parallels from well-known fables.
1.Don’t let short-sightedness kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
In Aesop’s fable, a farmer, impatient for a large nugget of gold, kills the goose that consistently laid golden eggs each day. When it comes to integrating AI into a business, short-sightedness in how AI skills training is rolled out could “kill the golden goose,” leaving employees disenchanted and disengaged with the technology. Employees are a valuable resource, and in businesses’ eagerness to harness the benefits of AI, falling into the temptations of one-size-fits-all approach to training employees will ultimately do more harm than good.
Instead, the knowledge and understanding employees need to succeed must be tailored to their departmental, team, and even personal performance goals.
Personalized learning makes employees more confident in their roles and provides them the opportunity to continually build on their current skills and learn new ones they may need for the future. Tailored learning programs increase employee engagement with AI tools, making them more impactful long term within your organization.
Importantly, employees will take note of the investment in them as individual, unique people who are worthy of the investment to their personalized development. This has a lasting impact on engagement that is hard to measure.
Thoughtful planning and strategy are crucial in how the learning programs are introduced and implemented. The patience to ensure employees’ needs are addressed correctly will yield long-term benefits and the goose will continue to lay golden eggs.
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2.If you are a Grasshopper, make friends with the Ants
Another well-known fable from Aesop talks about a grasshopper who spends the summer singing and dancing while the ants tirelessly work to store food. When winter arrives, the grasshopper finds itself starving and returns to the ants begging for food. Generally, the fable is understood as a moral lesson about the virtue of hard work and eventual benefit for the future.
If we are to learn from the ants, where can we focus our AI efforts to ensure the best yield during more challenging times to come? Put another way, how can we invest to improve our agile response to unexpected or unknown AI business needs?
AI’s impact is particularly profound within the HR department, which could be an opportunity to lay the groundwork for AI adoption and upskilling throughout other departments. Looking at this through the lens of onboarding, it becomes clear that HR’s adoption and understanding of AI will have ripple effects throughout an entire organization. HR teams are tasked with onboarding and training new employees, and as they get up to speed on company policy and workflows, HR pros can integrate AI into the process to make it a more seamless and personalized experience, while familiarizing employees with AI training modules.
As HR develops onboarding and development programs that thoughtfully include AI, this will foster a greater adoption of the technology throughout the workforce. Subsequent training programs can build on this and flow in other more strategic ways to teams and divisions. Ensuring HR is given access to the right tools will provide the stored benefit of an agile workforce.
3.Don’t give up on the Tortoise, or put another way, the Hare doesn’t always win
The third fable is quite well known, and my memory always takes me back to a rascally rabbit. It can be tempting to confidently jump deep into technology as the method to succeed with AI solutions, but a thoughtful strategy that depends on consistency and accuracy of data will bring steady and positive results.
The beauty of the fable is that “slow and steady wins the race” – a concept very relevant to the implementation of the latest technologies such as AI and XR. There are many possible alternatives that may get you there faster and they all sound attractive, but a focused and phased approach is best.
While employees can be trained on how to leverage AI within their roles, the technology itself can also do the training. Infusing AI into training and development unlocks the capacity to start implementing XR as a mode of learning. Similar to AI, as companies look to utilize virtual and extended reality tools, taking a slow and steady approach is necessary.
Initially, virtual reality training was focused on hyper technical training, using the technology to virtually create a training session on how to operate heavy machinery for example. However, the impact of XR on learning is gaining momentum. Companies are looking to strengthen holistic training methods while capitalizing on the success of popular XR headsets.
A recent PwC study indicates that virtual reality has a significantly greater retention than typical learning methods because they create real emotional scenarios. XR unlocks the ability to simulate real-life physical, behavioral, and emotional situations in virtual worlds. Individuals can practice navigating relevant situations and develop skills they can immediately use on the job. For example, a training course for managers on having a conversation with an employee that is about to be terminated.
To summarize, businesses would be smart to heed the lessons from Aesop’s fables when it comes to their AI implementation and training strategies. In particular, heed this advice:
- Avoid shiny object syndrome — don’t let shortsightedness of a new “cool” technology distract you from the tangible goals and outcomes you are trying to achieve; focus on those and train employees for those skill sets.
- Putting the hard work in now for AI will help you become a more agile organization, capable of handling any curveballs or “long winters.”
- Don’t rush to be first, take it slow and do it right with appropriate workforce upskilling and reskilling programs.
As AI continues to evolve, it’s imperative for organizations to understand its potential and navigate the hype cycle with a clear-headed approach. By focusing on training employees effectively, tailoring learning programs, and investing in the right tools, businesses can harness the power of AI to drive innovation, improve efficiency, and achieve sustainable growth.
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