\u201cI can all day say, \u2018AI matters, we should be using it, it will drive our impact farther\u2019. Hearing an executive say it is really different than hearing your peer be like, \u2018Oh, actually I can get my work done 30% faster and then I can focus on these other things\u2019,\u201d said Bijal Shah, chief executive officer of workforce education company Guild, which assembled an internal team of AI \u201cactivators\u201d from across departments to help spread the word.<\/p>\n
Some companies are turning to the influencer strategy after earlier, top-down adoption efforts stalled out. At commercial vehicle maker International Motors LLC (formerly Navistar Inc), traditional training worked for those keen to experiment, but wasn\u2019t effective for the large majority.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started with training like everyone else; it didn\u2019t work,\u201d said Tim Foley, International Motors\u2019 head of AI adoption. \u201cYou think this would sell itself, but it doesn\u2019t. People need 10 hours of practice and they\u2019re so busy.\u201d<\/p>\n
So Foley devoted time to helping early adopters \u201cfind their voice\u201d to become influencers. They\u2019re given opportunities to work on their messaging, bots that help them write social posts and even premium licences to AI tools, which they can share with colleagues of their choice.<\/p>\n
How influencers surface<\/p>\n
At Morgan Stanley, Alisha Lehr, chief operating officer for firmwide AI, says she scouts influential and intellectually curious vice-presidents from across the company to join her \u201cAI ambassadors\u201d team. Those VPs are deputised to run division-specific training. Some have created cascading networks of influencers within their own groups. \u201cScale is key,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Other companies designate their in-house experts less formally, perhaps by maintaining internal leaderboards that feature the heaviest users of AI tools, or through subtler means, like inviting employees to showcase their AI workflows to colleagues at all-hands meetings.<\/p>\n
Yelp\u2019s head of engineering and chief of staff, Yoann Roman, says it\u2019s pretty easy to identify potential influencers by talking to department heads and keeping an eye on internal Slack channels devoted to sharing AI tips and use cases, where those passionate about the technology tend to congregate.<\/p>\n
The enthusiasm and expertise freely shared in company chatrooms can be hard to replicate with the typical top-down approach to employee training, which is where peer-led instruction comes in. Relinquishing control over exactly what\u2019s getting taught in the AI training sessions at ServiceNow made executives nervous at first, Howson said. But letting go was necessary for the scale and speed of what they wanted to accomplish.<\/p>\n
Room for sceptics<\/p>\n
Software maker HubSpot has multiple strategies for deploying in-house influencers, including one inspired directly by social media. Every Monday, the company posts a new \u201cMondAI minute\u201d, a 60-second clip featuring a clever AI use case from an employee who might work anywhere within the company.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a TikTok generation,\u201d said chief people officer Helen Russell. \u201cWe also have to talk to the organisation in a way that they want to receive information.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another effort came from the software maker\u2019s customer-support department, which carefully selected 10 employees who held sway with their peers to become AI \u201cchampions\u201d. With training their colleagues, they meet a couple of times a week to generate readouts for senior leaders on how it\u2019s going.<\/p>\n
Key to the strategy: alongside AI enthusiasts, it recruited some doubters. \u201cWe purposely tapped the sceptics because they\u2019re the ones that are like, \u2018Here are all of the reasons why it can\u2019t work\u2019,\u201d Russell said.<\/p>\n
Making space for that honest feedback built trust, Russell said. It also helped the department surpass its goal for AI adoption. While the AI champions team hoped to help deliver an adoption rate of 70%, they hit 80% in a month, Russell said.<\/p>\n
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor\u2019s Picks<\/a>, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week\u2019s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI can all day say, \u2018AI matters, we should be using it, it will drive our impact farther\u2019.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[23568,365,363,364,1559,8556,9948,2949,1333,78,14991,94232,296,111,139,8476,69,94231,94230,145,1955,1316,17708],"class_list":{"0":"post-138304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-adoption","9":"tag-ai","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-called","13":"tag-companies","14":"tag-employee","15":"tag-finding","16":"tag-get","17":"tag-in","18":"tag-influencers","19":"tag-integrate","20":"tag-into","21":"tag-new-zealand","22":"tag-newzealand","23":"tag-novel","24":"tag-nz","25":"tag-stafffriendly","26":"tag-stalls","27":"tag-technology","28":"tag-ways","29":"tag-when","30":"tag-workplace"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}