The book
Are you ready to turn your organisation's scattered AI use into a lasting strength?
The method for closing the AI Empowerment Gap.
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Why this book
Your people may use AI every day and still be a long way from harnessing its power. That AI Empowerment Gap leaves individuals and organisations short of what they could achieve: doing existing work better and faster and taking on work previously out of reach. Your challenge as a leader is to help your people close that gap and turn their growing capability into lasting organisational strength.
Leaders respond with new platforms, policies, training and mandates, then wonder why so little changes. Too often, those responses are designed outside the work, missing what the organisation needs to learn about AI: where it helps, where it fails and what it needs. Those answers come from the work itself, with the people who do it.
This book shows leaders how to close the gap with the Top-Down Inside-Out approach. Leadership sets the direction and supports the people doing the work. Together, they develop the organisation’s AI harness and people’s ability to use it through seven steps, followed by continuing improvement.
Who it is for
Leaders of organisations in any sector, from 50 people to 5,000 and more. If your people do knowledge work and you want AI to make the organisation stronger, this book is for you. It gives you the clarity, confidence and direction to take charge, whether AI use is spreading unmanaged or your existing initiatives have stalled.
Read this book to
- See where your organisation stands and how much more it could achieve with AI
- Stop pouring money into AI initiatives that leave the underlying problems untouched
- Uncover where AI could create the most value in your business and build the case for pursuing it
- Draw on what the people doing the work know and discover, with leadership taking responsibility for building the capability
- Build AI capability that keeps developing as people come and go
- Help your people use AI safely and get work that meets your organisation’s standards
Inside the book
- Introduction
How AI entered your organisation, and how to turn scattered use into a strength the company keeps developing.
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- 1
The Cost of Bottom-Up.
How AI spreads through an organisation from the bottom up, what it costs, and why closing the gap is leadership's responsibility.
- 2
The Outside-In Trap.
Why the usual responses stall: platforms, policies, training and mandates designed outside the work.
- 3
From the Inside Out.
Why the intelligence you need can only come from your people's own work, and what an AI Empowerment Programme gives you.
- 4
Set the Course.
Step 1. How leaders set the direction and bring their people into the work.
- 5
Make It Safe.
Step 2. How people use AI without exposing themselves or the organisation to its risks.
- 6
Make It Yours.
Step 3. How teams turn generic AI into specialist help on their own work.
- 7
Set Up the Helm.
Step 4. How to set up the decision-making that turns what people discover into visible outcomes.
- 8
Size the Value.
Step 5. How people find, measure and prioritise the work worth giving to AI.
- 9
Build.
Step 6. How your own experts build AI assistance while continuing their work.
- 10
Expand to Absorb.
How the organisation absorbs what people discover, so useful skills spread and working practices develop.
- 11
Nine Months Later.
What the first nine months look like from inside, and what it means for the programme to become theirs.
- 12
The Road from Here.
Where you stand, what stays useful as the technology changes, and the decisions within your own authority.
Appendices: The North Stars and The Method.
Throughout the book, readers follow a family-owned consultancy of 60 people as it works through each of the seven steps.