Determing your approach & strategy to addressing Workplace AI
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 .
This page is incomplete!
This page is part of my step-by-step guide to Workplace AI, which I'm in the process of writing. I'm doing it in the open, which allows people to see it and provide feedback early. However many of the pages are just initial brain dumps, bullets, random notes, and/or incomplete.
There's an overview of what I'm trying to accomplish on the "What is this site about?" page.
Want to stay updated pages get major updates or things are added? I have a news feed specifically for guide content here: RSS feed for guide updates .
—Brian (July 2024)
- 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?
“I’ve heard we need to do this AI thing. I don’t even know what that means! Now what?”
Clarify the situation. Who started the conversation and why?
Who started the conversation? Are you an IT leader who recognizes AI is a thing and wants to formulate a strategy? Did your employees come to you with demands to use it? Did you “catch” your employees using AI tools and want to know more? Are there employees who want to bring AI into the workplace and you’re not really sure what do to?
Next, look at expectations.
Do you have goals yet? (It’s totally ok if not! You might really be at the phase of “I don’t even know what AI means!” and that’s fine.) Budget? Timeline?
Are there specific problems you’re trying to solve? Productivity, making your place cool, automating tasks, doing the same work with fewer people, keeping the same people but doing more work, etc?
Where do you begin if you don’t even know what problems you have, what AI can do, or where to start?
This goes back to how you came to be reading this now.
A lot of the stuff on the internet talks about assessing all your business processes and pain points. But most business processes are not written down, and really understanding them would take a lot of time and probably wouldn’t even capture the way things really work anyway. You’d have to become your own little internal McKinsey.
There’s low hanging fruit. But even that depends. Is it about automation. Is it about keeping employees engaged. Is it about laying people off? Hard to say.
Is your company even ready?
I mean, really it doesn’t matter. It’s coming, no, it’s here, whether you’re ready or not.
But AI is about data, how’s your data? The more formal your org is, the better AI can be. What’s your culture. LLMs write a lot, would your org benefit from more writing? Are you meeting oriented, or writing oriented? How do people work? Do people like change?