More than 75% of managers who reported that their artificial intelligence implementations improved their team’s decision making and efficiency also saw improvements in collective learning (87%), team morale (79%), and collaboration (78%), according to the just-released MIT Sloan Management Review (MIT SMR) and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) 2021 global study “The Cultural Benefits of Artificial Intelligence in the Enterprise.”
In its fifth consecutive year, this longitudinal examination of cross-industry AI adoption identifies a wide range of AI-related cultural benefits at both team and organizational levels.
Key study findings include:
• AI-related cultural and financial benefits build on each other. Using AI helps companies reassess what it means to be effective. This leads to new business objectives, which leads to new ways to measure performance, new behaviours, and improved outcomes.
o Survey respondents who see significant financial benefits with their AI initiatives are ten times more likely to change how they measure success as a result of using AI than those who saw no such benefits.
o Sixty-four percent of companies that use AI extensively or in some parts of their processes change how they measure performance and adjust their key performance indicators (KPIs).
o When AI enables workers to outperform existing KPIs, new success measures are necessary. Sixty-six percent of respondents who agree that their KPIs have changed because of AI also see improvements in team-level collaboration.
“Most companies still have a long way to go to generate substantial financial benefits with AI,” says Sam Ransbotham, a professor in the information system department of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, an MIT SMR guest editor, and a report co-author. “Those who do obtain significant financial benefits often have learned how to culturally benefit from AI and how to use AI to glean financial rewards. Our research suggests that these are connected, not separate, activities.”
• AI that is effective at the team level doesn’t always yield financial success at the organizational level.
o At the team level, 58% of global executives agree that their teams have improved in both efficiency and decision quality since implementing AI solutions.
o But at the organizational level, only 11% have seen significant financial benefits from their AI initiatives. It may be that few companies are implementing AI at a scale sufficient to generate substantial financial benefits.
Shervin Khodabandeh, a senior partner and managing director at BCG and the coleader of BCG GAMMA (BCG’s AI practice) in North America, adds, “Given how effective AI has proved to be at the team and cultural levels, it is imperative that leaders within companies find ways to translate that more broadly to the organizational level. Furthermore, AI can become a managerial tool to align micro behaviour with broader goals, including societal purpose, equity, and inclusivity.”
Sourced from Boston Consulting Group - written by Eric Gregoire