Winning the AI War May Require Losing The AI Talent Battle
Why Traditional Management Best Practices May Cost You in an AI World
Artificial Intelligence has completely upended our world, and is already changing how businesses operate, innovate, and win. Getting AI right may very well determine the level of success your business is able to achieve in the coming years. However, winning in an AI world may mean letting go of traditional management practices that will hold you back.
The biggest one? Thinking you need to hire top AI talent instead of investing in people who can leverage AI to grow your business.
The AI Talent Battle Is Over. But It Doesn’t Mean You Lost The War.
Hearing businesses claim “we only hire top talent” is almost a cliche at this point. However, top AI talent is out of reach for all but the biggest companies. Individuals expert in AI are few and far between, their skills are highly in demand, and costs to hire them are escalating to sky high levels.
As new technologies have disrupted business, the approach has always been a scramble to hire the top talent and experts in that technology. However, history has shown that what drives long-term growth is a workforce that doesn’t build the tech, but figures out how to use it in novel and unexpected new ways to do their jobs better, and along the way, discover revolutionary ideas that forever change how the business operates. In the age of AI, this approach not only makes strategic sense, but can help your business get ahead of the AI-growth curve. Furthermore, a big advantage of AI is that it does not need you to learn technology and coding to use it. You can make it work by communicating with it in ‘natural language’.
In 2024, AI talent costs have reached unsustainable levels. Experienced specialists in the U.S. command upwards of $300,000 [1][2]. Even outsourcing may be prohibitively expensive, with entry-level positions commanding $7,000-$10,000 annually. And that’s assuming you can even find someone, given that 76% of companies report difficulty finding qualified candidates.
Even when organizations succeed in hiring top AI talent, they often encounter fresh challenges. High turnover rates, cultural misalignment, and rapidly escalating compensation demands create ongoing disruption. External hires may fail to align with your company’s long-term goals or find your traditional business less engaging than they anticipated. When they leave, critical projects can be stalled, tribal knowledge is lost, and the AI capabilities you worked hard to develop may disappear.
And mind you, this is only to hire someone who can build the tech, not necessarily the person with a radical vision for how AI will upend existing ways of doing business.
Find The AI Business Builders
Rather than competing in the increasingly unsustainable tech talent war, I recommend focusing on cultivating AI Business Builders rather than expensive AI Technology Builder roles. There are several reasons for this.
The first reason is that most organizations are not building their own AI in-house, and therefore, expertise in coding or development isn’t necessary. AI tools like ChatGPT or Anthropic have advanced natural language processing capabilities, which means that with just a few hours of training, any employee or user can learn how to extract value from the AI with the right questions (prompts).
The second reason is that AI builders likely won’t understand how your business operates and how the technology can be used to solve growth-minded problems. Empowering internal domain experts and SME’s, as well as hiring employees with well-articulated visions for how AI can transform your business, is a better long-term investment in your AI success.
This approach not only makes AI more accessible but also strengthens employee engagement and loyalty. Studies show that 94% of employees are more likely to stay with companies that invest in their growth [4]. Additionally, 85% of employees believe AI will impact their work in the future [5]. Employees who believe that they are being empowered by the new technology, instead of replaced by it, are more likely to be engaged in using AI to drive transformation and growth. This helps create an environment where employees are more engaged and motivated and sustains a culture of innovation.
To build a team of AI Business Builders, invest in tailored training programs and mentorship opportunities. Many universities and online learning platforms now offer inexpensive business user centric AI courses that are available online, and can easily be made part of employee continuing education. Look for ones that offer a certificate, as your employees may find more value in those courses, and be more likely to leverage the opportunity.
Additionally, implement a reasonably priced Business Builder AI platform that can hand hold your employees from ‘data to value’. AI agents in these platforms consolidate and make your data AI-ready, identify, execute and operationalize AI projects (use-cases), ensure compliance and privacy, and show hard dollar ROI of these projects. All of this while needing no AI technical expertise from your teams – communicating via a natural language like English.
In addition to training and an AI business Builder platform, for highly specialized tasks, consider engaging AI consultants on short-term assignments. This allows you to bridge capability gaps without incurring the long-term costs and risks associated with hiring external talent. However, its important that you identify existing employees to do ride-alongs with the consultants to ensure that they are learning from experts, and so that valuable systems and process knowledge becomes institutionalized in your organization, instead of walking out the door with the consultant when their contract is over.
To get the most out of your AI investment, you have to be invested in getting the most out of your people. That means looking past the technology, and to the problems and opportunities that you’re hoping to address. Those solutions won’t come from AI, but by an engaged, optimistic, workforce that is empowered to leverage the technology to its full potential to optimize what’s already working, find creative solutions to problems, and chart new pathways to the future that hadn’t been possible before.
The Key to Winning: Let Go of the Old to Embrace the New
Winning the AI war isn’t about fighting every battle. It’s about knowing which ones to let go of. Here’s what I recommend:
- Invest in Your People: Upskill your workforce, give them an easy to use business builder AI platform, and provide them an AI consultant to shadow – to build a committed and motivated, AI-savvy team. This approach ensures your talent grows and excels alongside your organization, in an AI world.
By letting go of outdated practices and embracing adaptability, strategy, and resilience, you can unlock AI’s full potential. Success in this AI-driven world belongs to those who know what’s worth fighting for and what to leave behind.
References:
[1] AI Engineer Salary in US, India, Canada and More | Available at:
https://www.simplilearn.com/ai-engineer-salary-article
[2] Software engineers with AI skills are earning 50 per cent more than non-AI engineers. [online] India Today. Available at:
https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/software-engineers-with-ai-skills-are-earning-50-per-cent-more-than-non-ai-engineers-2543164-2024-05-24
[3] Financialexpress.com. Financial Express. [online] Available at:
https://www.financialexpress.com/business/digital-transformation-93-of-large-firms-see-ai-as-essential-but-talent-remains-constraint-report-3587988/
[4] Effective Employee Development Starts with Managers. Harvard Business Review. Available at:
https://hbr.org/2022/03/effective-employee-development-starts-with-managers.
[5] Most workers think AI will affect their jobs. They disagree on how. Available at:
https://www.adpresearch.com/worker-sentiment-ai-impact/#:~:text=Most%20workers%20believe%20AI%20will,necessary%20to%20advance
%20their%20career.
[6] Performance through people Transforming human capital into competitive advantage. Available at:
https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/mckinsey%20global%20institute/
our%20research/performance%20through%20people%20transforming%20human
%20capital%20into%20competitive%20advantage/mgi-performance-through-people
-full-report-vf.pdf.
[7] Gartner Survey Reveals 80% of Executives Think Automation Can Be Applied to Any Business Decision. [online] Gartner. Available at:
https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2022-08-22-gartner-survey-reveals-80-percent-of-executives-think-automation-can-be-applied-to-any-business-decision.
[8] Harvard Business Review. Keep Your AI Projects on Track. Available at:
https://hbr.org/2023/11/keep-your-ai-projects-on-track.
[9] Harvard Business Review. How Midsize Companies Can Keep Up with AI. Available at:
https://hbr.org/2023/05/how-midsize-companies-can-keep-up-with-ai.
