Date: June 17th, 2025
Author: Bob Royce
Reading Time: 3 min 10 sec
Leaders today are challenged by the rapidly increasing complexity of their world. Many grasp the power of AI to transform how value is created and delivered, but also see the risks of another new technology and feel a weight of responsibility to their mission, the people they serve and their overworked teams.
Why it matters: AI is transformational, and trying to keep up with its growing capabilities will make your head spin. But the relentless hype is a distraction. You don’t need to be a technology expert to lead your team through this transformation successfully. Instead, you need to anchor your strategy in the human wisdom that already drives your organization.
The big picture: Your work is complex. Every day your team tackles issues that are both systemic and constantly evolving. A common strategy is to improve efficiency through automation, but that is not the answer to every problem. If there are a clear set of SOPs that work in every circumstance, everything works well. But many contexts involve so much uncertainty that they behave more like ecosystems than machines. Our world is full of both, but nearly all our tools and machines are focused on known, stable problems and breakdown in the face of any complexity. We rely on people to handle the complexity that “falls through the cracks.”
And as the world gets more and more complex, the cracks keep growing.
A lesson from GM. A colleague of mine consulted for General Motors back when it was a behemoth with hundreds of thousands of employees. His key insight? “The solution to every problem is known to someone in the organization, but rarely to management.” It is your people on the front lines that see the patterns and pressures up close. They understand the nuances of your clients’ needs and the cracks in your systems. Their collective intelligence is your greatest asset.
Think of AI as a Complexity Machine. AI helps your organization tap into that collective intelligence. It is a new kind of tool designed to help people work with complex, interconnected challenges. It can process vast amounts of information, help teams discern patterns, and orchestrate more effective responses to multifaceted problems.
AI won’t fix anything on its own, but it is a game changer if you use it to amplify the ability of your team to discern patterns, adapt quickly, and act wisely.
Your frontline worker’s intuition about a client’s needs, combined with AI’s ability to analyze historical patterns and suggest resources, creates more powerful outcomes than either could achieve alone. Your leader's strategic thinking, supported by AI’s capacity to model different scenarios, leads to more effective planning.
So how do you harness this power without overwhelming your team or compromising your values? You start by empowering your people and taking it one step at a time.
1) First, Gain Clarity
A complex terrain demands a clear map and sober assessment of your readiness for the journey ahead. You may be an early adopter, but your team likely contains a mix of attitudes toward technology, so begin by discerning together how to separate the wheat from chaff regarding AI in your context.
2) Second, Gain Alignment
As the African proverb goes: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Lasting transformation requires shared ownership and trust. AI introduces new risks and challenges from both a security, risk, and compliance perspective, and for your company culture. It is important to work together with your team to establish clear governance for responsible and safe AI use and align AI initiatives with your strategic business goals and values. Consider forming an AI Center of Excellence to help facilitate the transformation.
3) Then, Gain Momentum
When introducing their revolutionary lean production system, Toyota had a saying: Go slow to go fast. When you’ve taken the time to build a solution foundation and align your team, you can start to scale AI implementation with confidence, deploying rapid, optimized AI solutions in an agile and responsible way. You don’t need a massive, multi-year plan. You need small, targeted wins that solve real problems and build your team’s confidence.
With this three-phase approach, AI follows what people want to achieve—not the other way around.
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