When AI strategy becomes a loyalty test
People are the biggest asset — is the proclamation from CEOs to emphasize and acknowledge that without people, no company would ever exist.
Here are a few quotes from famous CEOs of famous companies:
“Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients” — Richard Branson, CEO and founder of Virgin Group
“Treat employees like they make a difference and they will.” — Jim Goodnight, CEO and co-founder of SAS Institute
“Employees are a company’s greatest asset — they’re your competitive advantage. You want to attract and retain the best; provide them with encouragement, stimulus and make them feel that they are an integral part of the company’s mission.” — Anne M. Mulcahy, former CEO and chairwoman of Xerox Corporation
All that sounds so good and heart warming until you read this article ‘This CEO laid off nearly 80% of his staff because they refused to adopt AI fast enough. 2 years later, he says he’d do it again’
It is a ‘fascinating’ read — fascinating if you skipped the part when hundreds of people lose their jobs.
The CEO saw AI and realized that AI is not an opportunity but an existential threat to every company and decided that every single person in the company has to start using AI. To demonstrate his commitment to the cause, for one quarter, he declared that every Monday will become AI Monday when people were only allowed to learn AI and not to work on anything else.
To his dismay, the majority of people didn’t want to do it. The most disappointment came from the tech people, not from marketing or sales. One can see why. Marketing and sales people have to generate tons of content for campaigns, presentation decks, proposals, etc. Mind numbing tasks. The tech people — on the other hand — have to produce something which works reliably to make the marketing and selling easier. You might remember my post ‘When money talks, AI should listen’ where the chairman of Goldman Sachs said that they don’t use AI where it really matters.
Obviously the CEO of IgniteTech didn’t get the memo. Also he realized where the company made a mistake. They hired people for many reasons, but one thing was missing — ‘belief was really the thing he needed to recruit for’. And then the company struck gold and hired its Chief AI Officer. The result? “Essentially, every division now reports into the AI organization, regardless of domain.”
But it all paid off. The company started producing software at breathtaking speed. One — patent pending — example is Eloquens, which is supposed to automate email handling at mass. Try to visit the site and you might notice another functionality delivered by the cult-like company — the help chatbot. I gave it a try on your behalf. You get greeted by a human-like avatar, which keeps closing its eyes so you feel the humanity. There is also a menu with suggested questions. It doesn’t matter what you type or ask, it always comes back with ‘I have contacted my owner for more information. The email will be sent to the owner as well.’ Both products are wrappers for ChatGPT and Claude.
No wonder 80% of the employees questioned the new direction.
Let’s close this delusional story with a mesmerizing quote from the vice-chair at Deloitte — “Most companies think they have an AI adoption problem. They don’t. They have an unlearning problem.” And “For AI adoption to succeed, employees must unlearn, relearn, and learn simultaneously.”
I wonder if these people have ever worked for a living.
Let’s close this on a positive note. In 2023, Eric Siegel wrote a book The AI Playbook. Inside you find a great case study of how UPS deployed a new ‘AI’ system which was built in a very short period of time but it took years to deploy and the deployment team consisted of over 700 people. The result? UPS saved 185 million miles, $350 million and 8 million gallons of fuel. And to quote a UPS delivery driver: “I don’t have to worry about meeting delivery times. It takes the stress away.”
Can you imagine that UPS would choose the IgniteTech way and fire 80% of their workforce just to push through an ‘AI’ solution
The recurrent pattern? If you hired people for their smarts, listen to them. Otherwise you are not running a company, but a cult.