CEO Perspective: The Challenges of Implementing AI for Business Leaders

When Open AI released ChatGPT 3.5 at the end of 2022, and I saw its capabilities, I had one dark prediction. I was sure we’d see a significant impact on the

job market as corporations saw the platform’s capabilities and pursued the efficiencies at scale that these large language models (LLMs) can certainly achieve. Corporations are known for ruthlessly pursuing efficiencies to increase profits and reward shareholders, right? 

Thankfully, that didn’t happen. In fact, the opposite happened: the US added 2.7 million jobs in 2023!

So what is happening here? Did U.S. corporations suddenly grow a warm heart and start making people-over-profit decisions? Certainly not. 

What we’re seeing here is a challenge that all companies small and large are having in the adoption of generative AI: people. 

Integrating AI in the Agency

In order to realize the speed and efficiency of generative AI, we all need the people in our companies to embrace AI and fundamentally change the way they approach work.

I’ve seen this firsthand at my agency, LT. When ChatGPT 4 was released in March of 2023, I signed up everyone in the agency with a $20/month account. 

My reasoning: how could everyone NOT get $20 of value from this amazing platform? 

In announcing this, I gave an impassioned speech about AI, technology, and the opportunity in front of us as an agency and the opportunity in front of each of them to significantly advance their careers by becoming an early adopter of AI in their work. 

Then, I set them loose to experiment with the technology and see for themselves how it could make their work easier, faster, better, and more fulfilling.

Did that work? Of course, it didn’t. 

In August, following my impassioned speech and launch of our “new AI future,” I sensed that we weren’t as far along as we needed to be in our adoption plans. 

I asked everyone to send me an example of something they had done with their ChatGPT account in the past week. 

There were a few bright spots across the agency of people who really dove into integrating ChatGPT into their work, but on the whole, most of the shared examples were of very little value to them or the agency.

So, what happened here? LT is rife with intelligent, curious, creative, and inspiring people. I realized that I had made the same mistake that’s being repeated across most companies today: I didn’t treat this as a true change management exercise. 

Like any rollout of a process or technology change, getting people on board requires leadership, communication, training, reinforcement, and accountability. 

Opportunities to Grow AI Use Cases

Since August, I’ve made a concerted effort in these areas by leading from the front. 

Has that execution of this been perfect? Definitely not. But we’ve made significant progress. 

I’m seeing some amazing uses of AI across all departments. Curiosity about AI has grown across the agency, and I’m being approached several times a week for guidance on prompting and how they can accomplish what they want to accomplish with AI. 

I know we’re getting better, and I’m seeing the progress. 

What leaders must realize is that, like all change management, it takes commitment and time to get where you want to go with integrating AI effectively throughout your organization. 

I’m happy with where we are today and very excited about what the future will hold for all of us at LT as we continue to progress in this journey.

You can look for future posts from me on how we’ve approached the rollout of Generative AI at LT, where I’ll dive into strategies for leadership, communication, learning, governance, and reinforcement to drive AI adoption in your teams.

In the meantime, leaders can look to the following free resources available from Convince & Convert for additional insights on effectively utilizing AI with their teams:

[On-Demand Webinar] 5 Steps to AI Readiness for Marketing Leaders[Article] Training Your Workforce for ChatGPT: A Comprehensive Guide[Podcast] How to Build a Future Ready Brand, with Mitch Duckler, Bestselling Author of The Future-Ready Brand and The Indispensable Brand