What to Preserve When You’re Adopting AI
What to Preserve When You’re Adopting AI
Every company adopting AI has a list of what it wants to gain – speed, productivity, etc. Few have a list of what they can’t afford to lose.
That second list matters. The things that make a company successful are often informal, unmeasured, and easy to break.
So before your next AI initiative, ask: What must survive this? Here are three to start with.
1. Customer loyalty
AI can make customers better off: fast answers at any hour, and people who solve problems on the first call. It can also make them worse off: endless loops, confident answers that miss the point, no one to call when something unusual happens.
The test: Is our customer better off, and more loyal, because of what we built?
2. Informal networks
Every company has an org chart. Then there’s how it actually works. Informal networks are how knowledge moves and decisions get made. Who’s smart. Who sounds good but isn’t. Who to call when you need an answer fast.
As a young engineer at Kimberly-Clark, I walked the plant floor several times a day. The operators told me things no system would catch. Today, AI could monitor every machine on that floor. It would also remove my reason to walk it.
AI makes it easy to remove the reasons people cross paths. Decide which of those moments to keep and keep them on purpose.
3. High-performing teams
Your best teams produce a disproportionate share of what goes right. You could undermine them by accident.
At McKinsey, our teams met almost daily. That collaboration and sparring made the work sharper.
AI doesn’t push back. Ask what it thinks of your idea and you’ll usually hear “Brilliant. Love it.” Working with people forces you to anticipate objections and think about how your idea affects other functions. That takes time. It also makes the thinking better.
Find out what makes your best teams work. Then protect it.
Your list will be different
These are examples. Institutional knowledge, judgment, and entry-level learning matter too. I’ll come back to that last one.
What is essential to your company’s success? What would be impossible to rebuild once it’s gone? Name it before you automate around it.
