From the course: Integrating Generative AI into Business Strategy

The importance of structuring AI leadership and ownership

From the course: Integrating Generative AI into Business Strategy

The importance of structuring AI leadership and ownership

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- Organizing your business for AI success requires thoughtful leadership and ownership structures. I get it, governance and organizational design isn't exciting, but it is utterly foundational. AI solutions live or die based on operating models wrapped around them. Here's how you want to think about approaching structuring AI leadership and ownership in your business. First, appoint a dedicated AI leader or group, ideally someone at the executive level. Their main responsibilities should include informing AI strategy, facilitating governance, managing partnerships, and guide and adoption. Second, implement cross-functional AI committees with representatives from business units impacted by AI. These groups can align on standards, use cases, risks, and roadmaps. Importantly, they act as two-way conduits, disseminating strategy down through the org and feedback up decision makers. Depending on the size of your organization, you can also consider subcommittees focused on areas like HR, IT infrastructure, finance, risk, ethics, and compliance. The more voices represented the better. Lastly, establish clear AI solution ownership at the team level where rubber meets the road. Designate product managers specifically empowered to drive adoption of new AI tools or to deliver solutions to customers. These end-to-end owners can liaise with technical AI teams on tooling, while also coordinating with change management for the business users impacted. Their ownership builds accountability. Laying this foundation of multi-tiered leadership and ownership delivers strategic oversight and direction, while still encouraging agility through decentralized decision making. It also fosters learning and best practice sharing across the organization, helping to scale AI competency. Decisive organizational design reduces bottlenecks, misalignment, and a duplication of efforts that can otherwise throttle AI success and value realization. After watching this video, take some time to reflect on your current AI governance, identify any leadership gaps or unclear ownership that you may need to address through a proposed organizational redesign. Remember, thoughtfully design structures empower teams, maintain alignment to strategy, and drive accountability for solution success. In the next video, we'll be looking at operationalizing your AI strategy, so stay tuned.

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