When a company is looking to really establish an AI system, what kinds of skills should they be looking for among the people on the team working on it?

Prasad: Depending on which part of the spectrum [the AI deployment is for], the skill needs are quite different. More individual productivity focus, which might be something as simple as Microsoft Copilot or spot applications specific to a function, it’s typically fairly straightforward to enable that, and it requires a little bit more of technical skill to get it going. Then there’s the second part of it, which is helping the user understand how to use it effectively. So you need a little bit of the technology and a little bit of that change management to get people off to the races. 

If you’re thinking about process efficiency, critical skills to have are: Somebody who has a deep understanding of the business—not just what we do and how we make money, but also the operations of how the business ultimately delivers on its products or services with some level of nuance. Someone who has an understanding of why the processes are the way they are. 

[Another] skillset that is very key is understanding of the data landscape. You might want to do something different, but you don’t know how to use your data effectively to get there. You can think of it as somebody who’s going and mining, trying to figure out where things are buried that you could use. 

The whole aspect around security and data privacy is the third element.

In today’s environment, doing this completely by yourself is very difficult, so having the right ecosystem partner. It could be a technology product company. It could be the right services partner, but somebody from the broader ecosystem who brings that additional outside-in view to help you on that journey.

Is there anything that companies often think they need to bring to AI development that they really don’t?

I think it’s a big mistake to approach this purely as cost savings and efficiency, because that’s the only view that you take. No. 1, you’re not leveraging the power. More importantly, you’re not going to get people excited behind it because at the end of the day, they don’t see how it helps them in their careers and their growth as well. 

One thing that most organizations need to be very careful about is taking a broader view on how AI can transform their business. The best way I’ve seen to do that well is take an outside view: What is my customer looking to do? How can I deliver something that is way better than what I’m doing for them today? And what do I need to do within my organization to help move in that direction? 

When you bring a customer view, it automatically means growth mindset. When you do a cost view, then it becomes much more of a shrinking pool. 

How can a CIO convince people with different points of view in the organization that they need to be part of AI planning, and how should the CIO be prepared to shift?

The convincing is less about whether AI is going to have an impact on the business. The convincing is really to say we need a well-thought-through approach on how we leverage the power of it. Where there’s a lot of mismanaged expectations is people thinking that it’s a switch: You turn it on and boom, you’re going to get the power of that happening within the company.

The CIO needs to be a strong business partner and can no longer just be a technologist. They need to understand what is the core of the business, what differentiates the business in the marketplace, what are the products and services that are offered? Bring all of that to the mix in terms of engaging with the other business leaders. 

The CIO needs to understand that it requires collective leadership. In the past technology, data and process, were almost independent pieces that had to be brought together. With AI, they’re coming together naturally. It requires a different kind of thinking and a different kind of governance. The CIO needs to play that role: on the one side establishing guardrails, but on the other side, enabling the business to use the power of AI. That requires strong partnership. 

Establishing an AI council in many companies is how they're thinking about it. Bringing a group together to say: We collectively need to look at this, not from a technology perspective, but how it can impact our business. What are the opportunities? What are the threats? And being able to respond effectively to that. 

With AI, there is a movement toward citizen development. You’re going to find everybody very easily able to use these tools for doing what they need to do. Now, the role of the CIO as a result is going to shift a little bit to say: How do I manage the risk that could happen to the business as a result of this? But on the other side, how do I also enable my business to use these things without me having to be in the picture all the time? The CIO really needs to shift that mindset of understanding and managing business risk and building innovation on top of that strong business risk framework.