Insights

How do you lead scarce (and often high salary) AI talent effectively?

Short answer: effective leadership is effective no matter the people.

Longer answer: there are some cautions and actions for more effectively leading AI talent.

Some context:

Leading people is difficult to start with. There are principles that should be applied, but application can vary by situation.

Leading knowledge workers tends to be another level up … almost never rote day-to-day.

Leading creatives is more difficult again and an advanced form of leadership. Most high end AI talent will probably be similar to the “creatives” category.

Here are some ways to amplify leadership basics for AI talent:

 

⚠ Motivation. Motivation foundations of purpose, autonomy, and mastery apply to any leadership situation. Autonomy and mastery are usually high on creatives’ list of preferences. Unless those two factors are missing or weak, the main gap is “why” the AI work.
👉🏻 Action: Help them connect their creativity to business purpose. Constantly and consistently communicate the “why” of the work.

⚠ Alignment. When you need more than one person to get the job done, you must add an extra foundation – alignment. The key is achieving high alignment (focus on common goals) with high autonomy (freedom in achieving the goals). Balancing autonomy and alignment is more difficult with creatives. They may see *any* reduction in creative autonomy as micromanagement.
👉🏻 Action: help them understand 1) how the business functions and 2) why aligned work is necessary for business (and their) success.

⚠ Value. Anyone can get lost in doing work they love. Creatives can be especially prone to “creating for creation’s sake.” However, in a business the act of creation alone usually does not have value.
👉🏻 Action: help them understand and deliver business value (however defined for your business), not just interesting creation activity or AI research.

⚠ Invisible work. Work “progress” is often in the brain of the creative rather than visible. This makes it difficult to measure progress in achieving business goals. Balancing autonomy and alignment is also more difficult.
👉🏻 Action: one approach is for them to work in short periods of time and demonstrate results (value) at the end of each period. Autonomy comes from allowing freedom in reaching the period goal. Alignment comes from demonstrating progress, integration with others’ work, and contribution to end goals.

⚠ Brand. In any industry, part of a leader’s role is to design productive work environments. Also in any industry, work environments are part of brand statements. In creative industries, this needs to be even more explicit. For example, would you trust an office design firm if their own office interior did not look great? This also affects hiring and retention.
👉🏻 Action: pay attention to work environment and brand alignment.

Overall action:

👉🏻 👉🏻   Align expectations all the way through the “people lifecycle.” No one, especially a creative, likes surprises when it comes to their work.

Wherever in the people lifecycle you need assistance or advice we can help.

We also have research-based leadership development programs that actually work compared to traditional programs. Our programs can even pay for themselves.

Contact us to see possibilities …

Are your customers getting the intended experience?

\Are you sure? How do you know? When did you last check

“Mystery shoppers” used to be a bigger deal in the brick-and-mortar days. Someone – even an employee – would act as a customer and check that everything was working well.

It seems that in these times of websites and Internet marketing that isn’t done as much.

Disconnects between website information, processes, and employee actions come up all the time.

Here’s an example:

I am taking a trip on an airline in an alliance where I have achieved a frequent flyer tier. The airline’s website indicates that flyers with my level can pick any standard seat free within 48 hours of departure.

That seems simple.

Not so fast …

First, “standard” isn’t defined anywhere, and that became important later.

When I tried to check in, I couldn’t find out how to pick a standard seat other than the one assigned.

This is what I found after over an hour on the phone with at least (I lost count) 6 different representatives. And different airline departments. In more or less this order:

❓ “Regular” customer reservation agents could not answer questions about seat assignments. I was shuffled a couple of times to find someone who might. Seats on this airline can be added revenue, so this is a miss.

❓ Picking a seat for free only applies to that airline’s upper frequent flyer levels. Not alliance partners. (not indicated on website and contrary to a normal reading)

❓ All frequent fliers with status, even alliance partners, can pick seats for free. (negating prior answer)

❓ No frequent fliers, regardless of status, can pick exit row seats for free. (completely new info, and negates some of above)

❓ Only some seats in the back of the plane are “standard” seats. (There is no indication in the check in seat map, or on the website, about what are standard or not.)

I gave up and went back to the check in process.

After having my status level verified and going through everything above … all other seats on the plane required a payment, even in the supposedly “standard” section! 🤷🏻‍♂️

Check in processes that have lots of linked functions may be more involved to change in some way.

However, changing pure information on a website should be relatively quick and easy unless something is wrong. Also, having reps who can’t answer somewhat common questions is frustrating. And misleading in this case.

Mystery shop your business. Or have someone do it.

And don’t make changes in place without changing other areas that reference the same information or rule 🙂

There is a great scene in the movie “Amadeus”: (https://lnkd.in/ehsJqwM5)

Composer and teacher Salieri presents Mozart with a piece of music in Mozart’s honor.

Mozart thanks Salieri and plays the music … then declares “that doesn’t really work, does it?” And proceeds to test some variations until he finds one that “works.”

Salieri was clearly a technical master and popular as a teacher. He did achieve success in his lifetime.

However, his success paled compared to Mozart’s both then and especially now. If it had not been for the play and resulting movie, Salieri would have been mostly forgotten … at least outside classical music specialists.

What does this have to do with AI and your business?

Business is ultimately both science AND art.

Keeping your business humming requires both having a score and conducting the orchestra.

AI can help with the technical details and automating some lower level work. And should for your business to keep up with (or pass) competitors. Don’t fear AI; fear competitors using AI if you don’t.

AI cannot help so much with the “art” of your business. What makes truly great music? Going beyond the mechanics of the score and by-the-numbers “conducting” … infusing art to both.

Make sure you understand what is the science part and what is the art part.

The art part is the human part that AI can’t replicate, at least now.

The former (AI) serves the latter (humans). Don’t let it get the other way around.

Culture will happen … the question: is it intentional or unintentional?

Colleague Tom Meloche and I have a discussion about some aspects of culture, and why it’s even more important for small to medium size businesses than they think.

https://www.linkedin.com/events/7171549638255071232/about/

Develop medical devices or medical device software?

Here are some observations and take-aways from the recent Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation® (AAMI) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration 2024 neXus conference:

https://lnkd.in/ecXnuBqZ