AI readiness is a trap. Like its cousin, AI strategy, it encourages you to put AI inside its tech box. It gives the appearance of action whilst putting off any real change.
And AI demands change. Your business only changes if you take action, then learn from the results and evolve. The best vehicle for change is a learning organisation. A model based on the culture of big consulting firms.
The business model works extremely well. Revenue and profit have been growing strongly for decades. Achieving this has forced those firms to develop a specific culture. Highly responsive to changes in the market and in technology. Based on continuous learning and improvement. These are the foundations of a learning organisation.
Why do we need this for AI? All elements of the technology are still improving quickly. Some use cases already work - coding and marketing outreach for example. We glimpse the outlines of many others through the fog of hype and hate. Wider structural changes are inevitable but their shape is still invisible.
Your AI readiness programme is about preparation. Preparing for what? No-one knows what AI will be capable of next week, never mind when your disciplined procrastination is over.
What can your business learn from the culture of big consulting?
Begin with learning itself. Only human beings learn.
The people who understand new tech best are those who play with it. Hard boundaries and prohibitions don’t work. Give people freedom to experiment and find out what works. And make them responsible for spotting risks and barriers as they emerge.
This happens at ground level. Hannah Hearth’s short piece on the way the Vercel product design team uses AI is revealing. The big message I took is that even small teams use completely different tools and AI adoption levels. From heavy users to skeptics, there’s no single right approach.
Building a culture of this kind means setting aside some well worn business nostrums. A learning organisation does not need everyone to be doing the same things. Metrics need to be tools for observation, not North Stars that everyone targets.
Your organisation needs to be highly aligned but loosely coupled. Teams will collaborate but overlaps and duplication mean they compete as well. Amazon has always worked this way - their famous two-pizza teams.
The hardest part for most leaders is letting go. Your job is to provide context, not control.
Big consulting firms are already learning organisations. Their model will change but they will more than survive any AI disruption. Can you say the same for your business?