Bridging the AI gap: Successful adoption in your workforce

Nila: Thank you both for joining me here today. We are here to have a conversation about something very important, so generative AI. So, it’s something that absolutely everyone is talking about inside and sometimes outside of work as well and we’re talking about how we can really make it land. Anna, you are one of our Life Sciences lead at Gate One, so it’ll be really interesting to learn a bit more about how it’s landing in that world. And Ben, you’re one of our digital experience experts, so it’ll be great to sort of delve a bit deeper into that as. And what I would love to do is just really get into some practical tips. What do leaders need to be doing? What do organisations need to be thinking about to make this land across the broader workforce?

Anna: Well, I must say, Nila, as our tech adoption queen at Gate One, I think you are absolutely the best person to be asking us these questions. Thank you very much. Thanks for having us.

Nila: Thank you very much. So, Anna, if we start with you, then. So, I have a fact here that says global AI market is predicted to grow by 13 times in the next seven years. So, if we think people are talking about AI now and it’s a big thing now, it’s going to become exponentially more important and bigger in the future. And I think this is really encouraging leaders to think about what their teams need now to support the adoption of Genei tools moving forward. I think it’d be wonderful, Anna, to start with you and just sort of delve into from a life scientist perspective, what are the sort of things that are you seeing across your clients and how are they navigating the world of AI?

Anna: Yeah, it’s interesting to hear that fact, Nila, because clearly there’s just been an explosion around this over the last year and what I’m seeing with the leaders in the space that I’m working with is, you know, they’ve really quickly upskilled themselves on the art of the possible and their focus now is on figuring out where they can actually get some value from this technology. So, we’re looking at proof of concepts from everything from content creation for personalised marketing campaigns through to accelerated drug discovery. I think in life sciences the opportunities are vast and the challenge for leaders is to really just hold onto the fact that this is just another technology to turbo charge the brilliant people across their organisation.

Nila: That’s a really good point, that to me, sounds really positive and something that people are already very excited about. But when you turn on the news or you speak to people outside of leadership, there does tend to be a little bit more fear and a sense of ambiguity around being able to use these tools. Are you seeing any of that with the clients that you’re working with at the moment?

Anna: Yeah, I think there’s a lot that’s happening in central pockets and then they’re perhaps the early adopters and then you have people in more traditional roles out in the business who perhaps are feeling left behind. So really, it’s about how do you build up that sense of trust, really enforcing the message of why are we looking into this? What could this mean for you? And fundamentally thinking about how are we building trust throughout this process?

Nila: And for anyone who’s a tech adoption enthusiast, that early adoption concept is something that is present in every technological advancement. So, it’s very, very normal for there to be a pocket of excellence or very enthusiastic people and then the rest of the population sort of need a little bit more time to adjust there. So, I’d say that’s fairly normal. Ben, so are you finding that everyone is embracing AI? What sort of things are you seeing with the clients that you’re working with?

Ben: So, I think if you look at this, across all of the industries we work in, we’re definitely seeing a huge gap. There’s a gap in a gulf of. Between those that are enthusiastically picking up and using AI led tech and those that are a little bit scared of it and ultimately a bit sceptical about it and neither’s wrong, but we need to think about how we help change both ends of that spectrum and everything in between within an organisation. It can’t just be focusing on those that are keen to be using it. We need to be thinking about everyone in a business to make sure that everyone comes on the journey.

Nila: What do you think is causing some of that scepticism and fear?

Ben: It’s a really good question. I think it can be scary. You know, even us, we’re concerned about, you know, what does this mean for our jobs? And it can also be somewhat exhausting hearing about this month in, month out and not knowing anything more about it. And that’s something that we need to kind of acknowledge, you know, what does this mean for people’s roles? How are we going to be using these tools? What are the risks associated with it? Whether it be on data leakage, whether that be on the kind of the privacy that should be put around, any tools used? There’s so many questions that not everyone has the answer to yet and only a handful of people in organisations do you really know about. I think what it’s important for us to recognise is that there’s that variety of feelings across the organisation. We should be talking about this and then use that to inform the change strategy that we would roll out across any organisation to encourage everyone on that spectrum, from adopter to concerned sceptic, to be a little bit more comfortable with AI and help them in their job to use it for the better.

Nila: So, you’ve already started to answer a little bit of the question that’s going to ask next. So if we were to then think about the future and how leaders can best move forward from a very practical way, what can they be doing or thinking about now to support their workforce with getting excited about Gen AI being a position to be able to use some of these tools that are being launched by technology teams across the organisation. So, I’m going to challenge you both to give me two top tips each.

Anna: I think, firstly, it can be really simple. Don’t forget about the change management bit because you might have spent some brilliant time coming up with these new tools at the centre in your organisation, but have you thought about the end user and whether they will trust in the product that you’ve created and the value that that delivers them and helping them to do their jobs? 

Nila: So really bringing change management in right at the beginning of the design? Yes.

Anna: Yes, because this is not a new challenge. We’ve seen this time and time again, for example, development of AI solutions to guide customer engagement of your sales and your marketing teams. And actually, some fantastic products have been created that don’t deliver value because ultimately the end user doesn’t see the benefit and doesn’t trust in the information that’s being given to them. So how do we bring them in much earlier on and make sure that these tools are really forming a part of the strategies and the operations across your organisation.

Nila: Thank you. As someone who genuinely loves change management, that is music to my ears. I enjoy being brought in very early to those sorts of conversations personally. Okay, Ben, two things that leaders need to be thinking about now to drive adoption of Gen Ai tools.

Ben: Okay, so the first one is one that I’m personally really passionate about. So, it’s creating a culture of experimentation and innovation within an organisation. And key to this is making it fun, right? So, making this something that everyone wants to get involved in. And it’s the cool thing to be allowed to be trialling and testing and getting a role on a project that is experimenting this in the organisation. I think examples of how to do this within an organisation might be to create communities of interest around this, so that people can inspire one another, learn from each other. It might be to create pilot groups. They’re going to test something out of, or even host AI focused off site days where you take people into an unfamiliar environment that inspires them and try new things out and then bring that back into the organisation. These are a few examples of just tangible things that you can do to create that culture of innovation that then proliferates through the whole business.

Nila: I love that. So, it’s about democratising it, not having it as something at the centre, but something that everybody’s encouraged to do

Ben: Absolutely, absolutely.

Nila: I like that part around something that people get to do as opposed to something they have to do. And what about the role of leadership in driving the adoption of Gen AI tools?

Ben: You know, that was probably going to be my second point, so it’s like, you read my mind. So, the role that leadership play in actually active engagement in the tools and setting the direction and ambition and also creating a culture of trust is pivotal for this to be successful. Leaders are going on this journey themselves of learning about the new tools and ways to use it in a business. And some will be okay with that and they should just jump into kind of learning as much as they can and lead by example in the business, but not everyone will be. So, you know, you could consider wacky ideas like picking up a reverse mentor, maybe someone who is more junior in the organisation but extremely passionate about this, that could advise you on how you could use this in your job and educate you on this. And what a great way to kind of make that link up across the business as well.

Nila: I love that. So, thank you so much for joining me here today. I really enjoyed our conversation. And something that I’m taking away is that actually fundamentals of change management and everything that we know about technology adoption more broadly still very much hold. You know, it’s about leadership, it’s about understanding where our people are at and the sort of things that they need to do to be able to embrace this. And we just need to be more mindful as we design these change management strategies and how to apply it to this specific technology change. So, thank you so much, both.