The 90-Day Generative AI Blueprint

As we continue to see innovations around artificial intelligence accelerate, I continue to hear about how confused executives are when discussing how to use the technology. Multiple studies illustrate this point, which Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff further emphasized during his Dreamforce keynote last month. Organizations recognize AI as being transformative and fear being left behind. However, they’re reluctant to dive right in without having a plan to create a rewarding implementation.

In truth, companies are focusing on the wrong thing, according to analyst Charlene Li, who has written books designed to help leaders transform their businesses. Instead of fixating on the shiny AI object, executives must determine a strategy to help the company achieve its business goals. This is a central premise behind her upcoming book, “Winning With Generative AI: The 90-Day Blueprint for Success,” which she co-authored with Harvard Business School’s Chief Digital Officer Katia Walsh.

“This isn’t just a technology; it is something we need to think about as an organization,” Li shares during an interview conducted this past spring. “People at the frontlines are already like, ‘Of course, I’ve used it, and it makes my life so much easier. Why are you standing in the way? How come you’re not getting your act together and doing something about this?’ Or, they’re very fearful about what will happen to their jobs. In this vacuum of nothing coming from the executive ranks, they’re just doing in anxiety. I feel like this is a place in time in 2024 for leaders to step up and say, ‘I don’t know necessarily exactly where we’re going to go with AI, but we will do something with it. And we need to figure out what we will do and won’t do,’ which is the foundation’s strategy to help us achieve our business goals.”

From Groundswell to Blueprint

Li is no stranger to helping companies adapt to a world rapidly embracing digital technology. Along with “Winning with Generative AI,” she’s the author of several other books, including “Groundswell,” “Open Leadership,” “The Disruption Mindset,” and “The Engaged Leader.” It’s because of “Groundswell” that I reached out to her because, after nearly two decades since its publication, I was curious if AI adoption in companies was done similarly to that in the early years of Web 2.0.

“Until you see your work actually changing in the way you interact and you see yourself changing the way you do your work, you can’t even begin to understand how transformative it is.”

With “Groundswell,” “it was about this whole mindset that you are not in control of this sport called social media. And the more you try to control it, the more out of control you realize you are. It was a complete paradigm shift for people,” Li explains. Now, decades later, we’re in the midst of another such evolution, this time caused by AI, but are companies more prepared for it now? “We think we know what generative AI is, but until you actually use it and see how it transforms the way you work, you don’t understand how paradigm-shifting it’s going to be.”

Li notes a difference between how organizations responded to the rise of social media and how they’re reacting to AI. Social media was quickly embraced by people at the front lines of an organization before filtering up to the corporate hierarchy. “And at some point, people very reluctantly said, ‘Oh, I got to pay attention to it.’” But even then, it wasn’t something senior leaders felt they needed to engage with, instead delegating responsibility to the communication or marketing teams.

The reaction to generative AI is different. Li shares that leaders recognize the importance of AI and how it’ll drastically change their business, though only the number who use it daily remains low. Many believe any transformation will take one to three years, but Li says those actively using it to transform their work could see the impact months or even quarters away.

This led her to team with Walsh to write “Winning with Generative AI,” a book she describes as not about technology but more about leadership. It’ll outline steps executives should take to bake AI into a strategic framework corresponding to their company’s purpose and values.

Foundational Values: The North Star for AI Implementation

When asked how companies can align leadership thinking around AI with front-line workers, she replies, “It starts with your foundational values, purpose, mission and business strategy.”

Li references an unnamed 130,000-employee company she worked with running business process outsourcing and call centers—the ideal sector vulnerable to the effects of AI. Instead of viewing AI as a threat or a tool for downsizing, the firm’s executives aligned its use with their fundamental purpose of enhancing customer experiences. They established clear principles: using AI to boost productivity and quality, particularly for lower-performing staff; leveraging the efficiency gains to develop new products and services; and improving their competitive edge through better customer understanding. By staying true to these principles, the company improved its performance and launched innovative offerings within months. This value-driven approach to AI adoption demonstrates how focusing on foundational principles can lead to sustainable growth and innovation rather than short-sighted cost-cutting measures that could ultimately harm the business.

Companies that use foundational principles as their North Star for AI implementation will forge responsible policies and secure significant competitive advantages in their industries. Li compares this approach to Formula One racing: “If you want to go fast, to stay safe, you have to have really good brakes…,” she explains. “They can only go fast if they know they can stop when something wrong is happening. And you are flying in dangerous territory — you won’t fly very fast, and you won’t even get off the ground unless you have those responsible AI policies in place. And they’re not that hard to write.” Li stresses companies can keep their existing privacy, data governance and cybersecurity policies and apply another layer on top, asking people to “be responsible, use critical thinking, take these steps, don’t do these crazy things, [and] go as far as you can on these other things.”

This doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t dream big about new technology. Li believes leaders should encourage their teams to have a use-case mentality and a strategic point of view on how something like AI will impact the business in the long term. “Most cases with generative AI are about tasks that you can automate or remove these mundane, repetitive things. Easy, no regret, fast moves that you can make,” she remarks. “But that does not give you a strategy. And it doesn’t set you up for where you want to be a year and a half, three years, five years from now. And unless you have that long-term view, you’re not going to take the steps today. Even though the steps might be small, you won’t have the right steps to have a strategic impact on your business.”

Li advocates for the top two levels of any company’s executive team to learn how to use generative AI and demonstrate that they use it in their jobs: “They don’t do tasks that normally use generative AI. But for them to use it as a thought partner is one of the most powerful and strategic ways to use AI. Those are the tasks that leaders have to do.”

Teasing out the 90-Day Blueprint

Though “Winning with Generative AI” will not be on store shelves until early 2025, Li shared a glimpse at what we can expect from her book. It features a dozen steps for leaders to take to succeed with the technology, each customizable. It covers “everything from how to get your team ready to the foundational values, how to write a generative AI strategy, pull out your business strategy and how to think about it to create value, how do you start looking at the feasibility of it and prioritizing that once we put in the various plan. And even just those few steps take you halfway through the process. And then you start talking about how you organize, communicate it with the workforce implications are, the data, the technology and also how leadership has to change because if you’re now leading an organization filled with these super humans who can do amazing things, who will you lead when that’s going to happen.”

She continues, “We’re giving you a roadmap, a blueprint for how to transform your organization so that it is ready to deal with this paradigm shift.”

Each chapter outlines what will hopefully be accomplished, the lessons learned, and the outcome with clear objectives and key results.

For example, in the first “week,” Li discusses setting up your “minimally viable team,” or MVT, to help get the roadmap going. She warns this isn’t the core team, nor are they part of an “AI council.” Companies can add people to the MVT as they see fit. In the same chapter, the book lists exercises to ensure everyone is on the same page and understands what generative AI can do. “This is about education and getting the tools in place,” Li states. There are also KPIs at the chapter’s conclusion to measure success, with one being a self-assessment — how comfortable are you with understanding how to use these tools? Do you have at least one general-purpose AI tool available and set up safely so everyone knows how to use it?

“Every week, we have an objective of what you’re going to learn and accomplish and key results that lead to measure how far you’ve gotten. It’s absolutely key.”

But why does the book set out a 90-day timeframe? It’s intentional, as Li believes it will take three months for this program to gain traction after setting everything in motion. It all won’t happen overnight.

Like her other books, “Winning with Generative AI” is tailored to leaders but can be helpful for teams and the enterprise. Li expressed that the information therein is general enough to apply to all these areas. However, she believes this book will suit “all the people who feel responsible for coming up with a generative AI strategy” who are uncertain about what to do next.

Li and Walsh’s research, analyzed and conducted, backs up the advice. Li emphasizes that Walsh is “actively doing this right now at Harvard Business School,” testing ideas and validating them against other studies.

And given the rapid pace of AI development, does Li worry that “Winning with Generative AI” will quickly become out of date when it’s published? She’s shrugged and said she’s not concerned. “The business problems we’re talking about have been business problems for decades. They’re transformational problems. We’re now putting those transformational problems in the context of AI. I like to say that we’re writing this book from the perspective of technology today but keeping in mind some of the inevitable things that will happen. But the impact on how quickly a business and therefore the book need to change because of that is actually a lot slower.” The authors will also be releasing an on-demand version, making it easier to publish an updated book should anything significant come along.

“Winning with Generative AI” is another reminder from Li to business leaders of the transformative effect technologies such as social media and AI can have. She warns that it’s not a one-off—it’s continuous. Leaders must change the way they think and adapt very quickly and this is a time for those who understand this transformation to step up. “Most organizations and most leaders are geared toward maintaining the status quo,” Li claims. “And they’re managers, not leaders, because leaders actually run towards change and they create change. If you’re not creating change, then you’re managing the status quo, and leaders identify how the world is changing, step into that void, provide the logic and the reason why — why we have to change — then lead the people who actually make the change.”

You can buy “Winning with Generative AI” starting January 2025.