Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

Paul Clermont discusses the adoption and impact of AI for automation. After a brief history of AI, Clermont discusses the dangers AI poses. Though technologists have perceived the dangers for some time, he notes that only now are the dangers starting to draw the attention of ordinary citizens and politicians. On a positive note, he outlines the measures that government, the tech industry, regulatory agencies, and the public are taking to address major dangers that AI and its applications present. He emphasizes government’s role in tackling the issues surrounding the use of AI and identifies a few specific areas that government should address.

Thomas Costello and Phil Laplante focus on the use of blockchain technology in automation appli­­­cations. Following a brief outline of the benefits of using blockchain technology, they discuss blockchain’s potential to provide transformational improvements in business process automation (BPA) in several industry sectors. They also highlight how blockchain could improve trust in, and the dependability of, BPA and examine the challenges in practical implementation of blockchain technology. Furthermore, they present a set of customizable questions to help implementers decide whether a business process is suitable for, and can benefit from, a blockchain implementation.

We feature eight articles in this issue that cover a range of topics of interest — from technologies that drive and support new frontiers in automation, such as blockchain, AI, and security, to automation strategies and design considerations.

When I worked with the Air Force years ago, they had a requirement for every program to capture lessons learned when the product was delivered. The programs that I worked with faithfully carried out this mandate and developed reams of reports that were compiled as lessons learned databases. Unfortunately, there was no requirement to review these databases in anticipation of new starts or to make policy/procedure corrections. As a result, the suggestions and experience that they contained was often lost. Let’s see what we can do to fix this at each of the levels of retrospective.

It is little wonder that banking and financial services rank at the very top today among the industries AI will impact greatly, according to findings from a recent Cutter Consortium survey examining the adoption and application of AI technology in the enterprise. This Advisor explores the various trends and industry developments that are driving AI adoption in banking and finance.

Here in Part XI of this Executive Update series, we look at how responding organizations view the success of their AI application development efforts to date, including whether they are deriving any benefits from their deployed AI applications and whether such applications are, in fact, actually changing how their organizations operate. 

Although some jobs will disappear during the AI transformation, AI was not created to eliminate jobs but to automate mundane or time-consuming tasks. This will complement and empower humans to be more effective and efficient at jobs that require human insights and judgment. Organizations that fail to pay attention to the AI digital transformation are putting themselves at risk. Employees need to understand this reality and view this required personal transformation as an opportunity to grow and tackle new opportunities. Today it is no longer a matter of what you know, but how fast you can learn and adapt.

One of the techniques people in the Agile community argue for is retrospectives. A retrospective refers to a meeting held at the end of an iteration where teammates reflect on what they experienced and recommend improvements. It is an important tool because it allows the team to take advantage of their lessons learned. The bottom line is that organizations need to put processes in place to facilitate sharing. Besides being easy to use, developers need to be motivated to use these processes, or else the databases that are provided will remain unused.