For over 25 years, I have studied exceptional leaders of innovation, individuals from a range of companies and countries, from the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi to Pixar. For hundreds of hours, I have observed leaders who have figured out how to get their colleagues to adopt emerging technologies to innovate and change the game for their customers. What I have learned from doing this work is this: leading AI innovation is not about having a vision and getting others to follow you to the future; rather, it is about inviting others to co-create the future with you.
This is also true of the AI age. While virtually every company is scrambling to adopt new AI practices, the leaders who have made the most progress are those who believe the value of AI will come from using the technology to do work people could never do themselves, and the least value will come from simply swapping machines for people. Their goal is to pursue solutions that augment human ingenuity.
And they appreciate that their toughest challenge is about people, not technology. These leaders know that we all need help navigating uncertainty, and they encourage others to try out new ways of working despite real intellectual and emotional demands. Innovation is rarely the feat of a solo genius but rather the fruit of co-creation, which requires collaboration, experimentation, and learning from people with differing expertise and perspectives.
Collaboration entails weaving together diversity of thought through constructive conflict to create a marketplace of ideas. Experimentation involves actively testing, pivoting, and refining. And learning happens when individuals and collectives reflect on what they have gleaned from those experiments—and then adapt their course of action.
To generate and scale innovative AI solutions, leaders rely on a repertoire of interrelated roles, what we refer to as the “ABCs” of leadership: architects, bridgers, and catalysts. Architects know they cannot mandate innovation; they foster the culture and capabilities that enable co-creation. These leaders start by raising their organization’s collective aspirations through a shared sense of purpose and values.
By re-shaping the social environment of their organizations, these leaders encourage their colleagues to work through the inevitable conflicts of collaborating with others and the fear of failure. They reward thoughtful risk-taking, treat intelligent failures as learning opportunities, and provide people the tools, data, and perhaps most importantly, the permission to try. Bridgers work at the boundaries of their enterprises, building trust-based partnerships with those outside their walls.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
