CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — CIOs are well-versed in the interconnected dependencies of people, process and technology. These days, AI is compressing all three areas of the classic framework — challenging business operating models and pushing CIOs out of their technology orientation as they tackle a broader remit.
“At the end of the day, AI is going to scale with people, systems and workflows,” Mojgan Lefebvre, chief technology and operations officer at Travelers, put it simply during a panel discussion at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium.
The people aspect garnered its share of attention at the event, as CIOs and other experts discussed not just autonomous systems and agents but the role of humans as enterprises press forward on AI.
Technology leaders underscored time and again the criticality of being a people leader, which requires thinking through what skills to invest in, how to invest in them and even how to help employees overcome, as one panelist put it, FOBO — the fear of becoming obsolete.
Monica Caldas, EVP and global CIO at Liberty Mutual, likened the people part to modernization initiatives during a digital transformation panel. “There’s not just modernization from the heavy-duty of the systems, but there’s modernization of how we work and even evolution in the skills, in the people,” she said.
Caldas referenced research that advises companies to think about tech and talent as a 1:3 ratio: For every dollar spent on AI investments, companies should spend $3 on people. “In the areas we’ve deployed [AI] that are most successful are where we’ve spent a lot of time on the culture, the skills, the people, the championing of the work,” she said.
Human-centric approach
The language of culture echoes prior technology shifts when mobile devices, cloud or digital transformation entered the vernacular. But it, too, carries a different weight with AI as employees speak directly to technology and as technology operates as a digital workforce, rejiggering departmental day-to-days and C-suite dynamics.
Take, for example, AI’s influence on skill sets and learning strategies. Rod Adams, principal for Advisory People & Inclusion Leader at PwC, said he now works closely with the consultancy’s CIO to help understand what’s needed to become an AI-native organization.
“That wasn’t the case prior to the last year or so, but it has certainly become the case,” he told attendees.
While technical skills remain critical, PwC also developed a set of 15 human-centric skills needed to advance AI in the organization such as coaching, agility, judgment and empathy. Redefining sought-after skill sets required the organization to also overhaul its recruiting approach as well as its development strategy for its 70,000 PwC U.S. employees.
“And then also looking into future, we typically hire 5,000 or so people a year,” Adams said. “How are we making sure that our learning platforms and our learning strategy and approach are developing those skills?”
Measuring performance can also be tricky, according to Adams. Determining how to hold employees accountable for meeting AI adoption and fluency expectations is still a gray area, and he called on IT leaders in the room to work with their people officers to think creatively and experiment on how to do this well.
One conference attendee brought up the recent trend of tokenmaxxing, where AI adoption and productivity are measured based on token usage, as “an insane way of motivating people” and inquired about emerging best practices for performance management.
Adams was candid: “We’re figuring it out.” PwC started with usage then added impact measured by qualitative indicators such as productivity or quantitative indicators such as client experience as well as depth of the use of AI. But, Adams noted, it’s still a work in progress.
“Because of that, we haven’t actually introduced it as a performance metric,” he said. Instead, the company is aiming to be transparent by surfacing how it’s trying to measure AI fluency with the expectation that it will be a performance metric at some point.
“We are trying to avoid fear but also motivate people to … get involved,” he said.
Acknowledging fear and understanding human concerns about where they fit into the new world order is critical to scaling AI — and another reason for CIOs to remember their role as a people leader, according to Irene Oh, CIO at Network Distribution, a supply chain management and distribution company.
“The people side of change is so important,” she said during a panel discussion, adding that if employees aren’t on board, change isn’t sustainable. Oh encouraged CIOs to work with C-suite counterparts to ensure their teams have the right tools and training to be successful. Doing so also enables CIOs to better clock uncertainty, fear and doubt within an organization.
“Technology is evolving quickly and it’s affecting the entire organization, not just IT,” Oh said.
