Workplace AI Strategy Guide
Table of Contents

Brian Madden,Workplace AI Consultant & Analyst

This page was last updated on June 18, 2024.

This page is part of The Workplace AI Strategy Guide

This page is part of a step-by-step guide to Workplace AI strategy, which I'm currently in the process of writing. I'm creating it like an interactive online book. The full table of contents is on the left (or use the menu if you're on a mobile device).

What's this guide all about? Check out the intro or full table of contents.

Want to stay updated when this guide is updated or things are added? There's an RSS feed specifically for strategy guide content. RSS feed for guide updates .

Welcome to the Workplace AI Strategy Guide!

This guide is my effort to collect & organize everything I’m learning about how companies can deal with the fact that all our employees have access to powerful AI tools (whether we know about it or not), how we can understand what that means, and how we can create a strategy for what (if anything) we should do about it. (Who am I and why am I writing this?)

I’m writing this guide so you can read it like a book, with each section building on the previous, though feel free to jump around and dig into the parts you find most interesting first.

This guide is broken down into 18 chapters, grouped into 5 parts:

Introduction
Core Knowledge
Impact
Creating your Strategy
Implementation

This guide is very much a work-in-progress!

I’m experimenting by publishing everything I write, as I write it, to this site. So many of these chapters are not complete. In fact, some are just bullet lists of notes, brain dumps, and pretty early collections of rough thoughts. It's like agile software applied to knowledge. A fun experiment!

If you want to track my progress, I have an RSS feed specifically for guide content which is updated as meaningful content is added or updated. RSS feed for guide updates .

Here’s a detailed Table of Contents which shows what’s covered in each chapter. Click on a chapter title to jump directly to that chapter, or scroll to the bottom of the page to find the “Next” button if you want to read through everything in order.

Part 1. Intro

1. Workplace AI Intro & Concepts

Perspectives on Workplace AI & this guide
Why are we here?
Why now?
What is workplace AI?
Risks
Potential benefits
Common misconceptions about workplace AI

2. The current Workplace AI landscape

What’s happening out there?
How did we get here?
Is this even “AI?” (Does it matter?)
Things are changing fast, recent milestones

3. AI is hype! Why should you care?

Why should you care?
Is AI strategic or important now?
Will you drive a strategy, or take a hands-off approach?
How AI affects productivity, efficiency, and decision-making
The future of AI in the workplace

Part 2. Core Knowledge

4. The (alleged) promises of AI in the workplace

The promise of AI
Myths
Will AI get there in the future?

5. The actual reality of Workplace AI capabilities

Understanding AI’s current realistic capabilities
Current impacts
Hype versus reality
Common misconceptions and over-hyped technologies
Lessons learned from failed projects

6. Current state: what’s really going on out there?

What are your employees doing now
What are they thinking
What are they being told
This is changing really fast
Challenges companies are facing today
Variations by region
Variations by industry

7. A tour of popular Workplace AI tools

AI vendors and their approaches: evaluating strengths and weaknesses
A tour of popular AI tools:
- OpenAI ChatGPT
- Microsoft Copilot(s)
- Apple Intelligence
- Google / Android AI
- Zapier
- Perplexity
- Mistral
- Rewind.ai
What AIs are available to employees to bring in on their own?
Evaluating workplace AI solutions & vendors

Part 3. Impact

8. How AI will impact your workplace?

Your relationship with your employees
Your employees’ relationships with each other
How you think about work output, effort, and projects
Adding new work capabilities

9. The changing employee / employer relationship

What do you measure?
What is productivity?
What’s it mean to work?
Using AI to enhance existing processes versus creating new approaches
Impact of AI on employee career development and growth
AI in performance management & appraisals
AI for employee engagement & retention

Part 4. Creating your strategy

10. Approach & strategy

Where do you begin if you don’t even know what problems you have, what AI can do, or where to start?
How to know whether your company is ready?
Risks and challenges of implementing AI in the workplace
How good are you at projects?
What’s your culture like?
What’s the relationship between HR, IT, Legal, execs?

11. Cross-functional challenges

Creating AI principles
Legal and ethical considerations
Navigating data privacy, IP protection, and employment law
Managing AI-driven change
Change management strategies for AI adoption
Balancing automation and human roles
Communication between groups

12. Where are people being successful today?

Enhancing employee experience and productivity
Encouraging creativity and innovation
Personalized learning and development
Enhancing project management
Supporting citizen developers
How do companies fail with AI?

13. Picking the right products

Initial steps for exploring AI solutions
Criteria for assessing the viability of AI tools
Guidelines and policies for using personal AI tools at work
What AIs can the company provide?
Can you create a list of company-approved AI tools and platforms?
How employees access and use these tools
Build versus buy
Do you need to hire AI experts?
AI built into every product you have, versus specific AI projects
Emerging technologies and trends

Part 5. Implementation

14. Forming a plan

What are you trying to solve?
Identifying business problems and opportunities for AI
Conducting needs assessments
Setting realistic goals for AI implementation
Defining success criteria and KPIs
Integrating AI with other digital transformation & digital workplace initiatives