Integrating AI into your organization requires more than just a budget for ChatGPT subscriptions and a few prompt engineering tutorials.

At Quantive, my task was to embed AI into the very fabric of our core operations. From HR and finance to sales and marketing, we needed to find ways to make our teams more effective with the help of AI.

We checked all the boxes you'd expect along the way: initial excitement turning to anxiety, a general desire to learn that ended up with only a few champions, and hesitation to change the status quo. However, AI became the perfect disruptor, reinvigorating the way our mature startup scaled. It allowed everyone to uncover new ideas to make work more enjoyable, efficient, and collaborative.

But like many cross-functional initiatives, there needed to be a hub for change—an innovation lab in our case. I started a team dedicated to this cause: identifying what we could improve, fix, or overhaul with AI and bringing those solutions to our teams. This initiative ran for two years, and here's what I learned and my actionable recommendations.

For a further deep-dive, you can listen to a similar discussion I had earlier this year on the Winning with AI podcast below

The Innovation Lab: Building the Foundation

Dedicate a Full-Time Team

You need a dedicated team led by a cross-functional leader, such as a Chief of Staff. Support this leader with a project manager and a handful of engineers. This team should approach their work as if they were a Product organization, with your employees and teams as their primary customers.

Inclusive of this should be a roadmap that everyone in the company can contribute to, ensuring that the team identifies problems, designs solutions delivers results, and iterates based on feedback without bias of who is contributing.

Rather than focusing on usage metrics, onboarding journeys, or feature releases, this team’s focus is entirely on helping others in the organization achieve their OKRs. This becomes their obsession.

AI All-Hands Meetings

Big changes will happen—workflows will be altered, and people will be both wowed and often left questioning. Schedule specific times or channels dedicated to the AI team. Let them amplify their work to inspire new ideas and show that feedback can go a long way.

Make AI the forefront of your discussions, but focus on how it's actually helping your teams and people, avoiding highly-technical jargon where possible.

Culture: Building Engagement and Acceptance

Build an AI Ambassador Program

Create a volunteer ambassador program designed to capture representatives (AI Champions) from as many teams and business units as possible. This program should involve some level of commitment, such as OKRs specific to experimenting with AI or weekly progress updates.

The purpose is to involve everyone in AI, not just the dedicated team, and have them relay their learnings and findings to others in their teams. More ideas and collaboration will lead to better solutions, increased understanding of challenges, and greater ownership at every level of the organization. The distribution of learnings and impact shouldn’t come from just one voice.

This made a massive impact at Quantive in allowing those on different teams - who rarely interacted - to work together and design solutions for the rest of the organization that would have never happened otherwise.

Run Enablement Programs

There will be strong interest in what gets built around your organization, but also a ton of questions. What you might think is disinterest or lack of effort on the AI front might be a cover for fear of AI or fear of asking something that may seem silly. Given the speed at which AI solutions are being developed, there is no such thing as a bad question in these cases. Make sure your team knows that.

The more questions you can answer and the more proactive you can be about what you're building, how, and why it's important, the fewer fears you'll have to deal with. Enabling your team on how best to use this technology, for what use cases, and how they can contribute to its future iterations will go a long way in bringing your team into the fold and engaging them more practically.

The AI Integration Playbook

You'll need a well-structured plan and a dedicated team to guide the integration process. Here's a streamlined playbook based on my experience:

1. Form a Dedicated AI Team: Assemble a cross-functional team with a Chief of Staff, project manager, and engineers.

2. Design a Roadmap: Create a roadmap that identifies problems, designs solutions, and iterates based on feedback.

3. Host AI All-Hands: Schedule regular meetings to share progress, gather feedback, and inspire new ideas.

4. Develop an AI Ambassador Program: Engage representatives from all teams to champion AI and foster collaboration.

5. Run Enablement Programs: Educate your team on AI initiatives, address their fears, and keep communication open.

By following this playbook, you'll not only integrate AI into your operations but also cultivate a culture that embraces innovation and continuous improvement.

Interested in learning more about integrating AI into your organization? Reach out today to discuss how a fractional engagement with OneTwo Growth Studio can help you seamlessly incorporate AI into your operations and culture, driving your business boldly into the future.