AI

Developing a ‘GPS’ for your GenAI Journey

GenAI GPS

“How you gather, manage, and use information will determine whether you win or lose.” – Bill Gates

The road to successful GenAI adoption will be full of many twists and turns, and your ability to understand what’s working, what’s not, and where you need to pivot will play a large role in determining your overall impact.  Unfortunately, the target state for success with GenAI is far less clear than with most strategic initiatives, like a merger integration or expanding an existing business model into a new market.  As a result, you’ll need to be clear about your objectives, while being adaptive and flexible along the journey.  You’ll also need to solve a range of new measurement challenges that are still a bit of work in progress.  Here are some things to keep in mind as you work to accelerate your impact with GenAI.  We call it your GenAI GPS.

Start with ‘Strategic Intent’ and embrace adaptability

Though GenAI’s potential value is compelling, exactly what ‘great is going to look like’ in 2025 and 2026 is difficult, if not impossible to forecast.  Given that reality, leaders will need to define a clear ‘Strategic Intent’ that defines what types of opportunities they’d like to pursue and what types of challenges they’re hoping to solve, and then be comfortable with both evolving significantly over the next 12 – 18 months.

Define clear strategic Outcomes for your GenAI efforts

With the pace of GenAI innovation, leaders should focus on defining clear and measurable business Outcomes for their adoption efforts, leaving significant flexibility around the ‘how’ they’re delivered.  Leading indicators that focus on experimentation and targeted learnings are particularly impactful during early-stage innovation efforts like GenAI adoption in 2024.

You’ll need to solve for a range of new measurement challenges

GenAI solutions, particularly those that leverage Large Language Models (LLMs), present a wide range of new monitoring and measurement challenges that need to be systematically addressed.  As an example, we’ve historically measured if a system is available and how long it takes to complete a defined task.  That’s because traditional systems are programmed to take specific actions in response to defined inputs.  LLMs, in contrast, are asked to generate custom responses to user prompts, based on the context of the interaction and the desired communication style and range of ‘creativity’.  It turns out that the very thing that enables LLMs to replicate more natural, human-like interactions, is much, much harder to monitor for quality.  

Leverage integrated insights to inform your GenAI journey…

To generate a comprehensive-view of the effectiveness of your GenAI efforts, you’ll need to leverage a wide-range of integrated measures of success, including:

  • Security
  • Customer Satisfaction & Loyalty
  • Efficiency Impacts
  • Revenue Impacts (for customer facing solutions)
  • Adoption
  • Performance
  • Costs
  • Responsible AI Measures (e.g. Bias, Fairness, Explainability, Inclusivity, etc.)
  • Supportability & Scalability
  • Brand Impacts

Refine your GenAI strategy and plans quarterly, and execute relentlessly in-between…

GenAI may accelerate adoption of Quarterly adaptability best practices.  While evaluating and optimizing your strategy and plans is becoming increasingly important in general, it’s absolutely critical when adopting GenAI.  As best practices are rapidly evolving, it’s important to define and align your strategy, plans and tactics on a quarterly basis, and then execute relentlessly against committed plans.  It’s likely that new industry innovation is going to take place intra-quarter across some or many areas of your GenAI efforts.  When it does, unless the changes are absolutely disruptive, it’s important to remain disciplined, execute your committed roadmap, and then reassess as inputs into the next quarter.  Otherwise, teams can spend the majority of their time reacting to new announcements instead of delivering meaningful increments of value every quarter.

What We’re Seeing in Practice

  • GenAI Measurement is really hard…: It’s difficult to overstate the challenges that LLM-based solutions present from a measurement perspective.  Innovations in the space are occurring on a continual basis, and this will become less of an issue in 2024, but as of the beginning of the year we still have a long way to go.
  • System latency remains a challenge for enterprise-scale LLM-based systems: Latency is a measure of a system’s responsiveness to user requests, and it’s a key challenge for LLM-based solutions in the enterprise space.  Foundational models, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard have been trained on vast quantities of data, and respond to user prompts based on their existing training.  When LLM-based solutions are asked to provide nuanced responses to company-specific topics, they frequently need to access data they weren’t trained on.  As of early 2024, this can drive significant delays in response time and can be a very real customer dissatisfier.  There’s likely to be significant innovation in this space in coming quarters, but it needs to be addressed as part of your adoption efforts.
  • Solving for hallucination and Responsible AI needs is critical, but can add to system performance challenges: Who knew computers could ‘hallucinate’?  It turns out that LLMs are the worst type of liars – they do it frequently, and extremely convincingly…  We’ve collectively come a long way in solving for hallucination, and many organizations even leverage a second LLM to ‘fact check’ the primary LLMs responses prior to sharing them with users.  These efforts aren’t foolproof yet, though, and can further contribute to the latency issues described above.
  •  GenAI measurement adds complexity to a space where most organizations already struggle: While GenAI presents a wide-range of new measurement challenges, let’s face it – many organizations already struggle to deliver the integrated insights leaders are looking for.  Ideally, GenAI will add momentum to in-flight efforts to mature integrated system measurement, but the additional complexity won’t make it any easier…
  • Companies can’t afford to ‘fly blind’ when it comes to GenAI insights: The complexity, pace, and inherent risks of GenAI solutions place a premium on an organization’s ability to understand where things are working, where they’re not, and where a different approach may be needed.  

“The Goal is to turn data into information, and information into actionable insights” – Jeanne Harris, Columbia University

If 2024 is the year we begin scaling customer-facing GenAI solutions, it will need to be the year we solve for a range of measurement challenges.  While there’s a lot of momentum in this space, significant work remains and it needs to be a core focus of your adoption efforts if you’re looking to accelerate your GenAI journey.

This is the fifth blog of an integrated ‘Keys to Winning with GenAI’ series.  

Previous Blogs in the series:

To learn more about Accelerated Innovation’s end-to-end GenAI enablement services, or specific topics of interest, schedule a call and get started on our GenAI Journey.

Defining Your GenAI 'True North' - A Closer Look

Target Duration

< 30 Days

While success with GenAI will be a journey, in the early stages of adoption you’ll need to:

  • What’s all the buzz about, and what does it really mean for my business?
  • How fast do we need to move?
  • Do we have the talent to succeed with GenAI?
  • Can we explore GenAI without exposing the organization to unnecessary risks?
  • Where do we start?

Understanding GenAI

A targeted 2 – 3 hour executive workshop to help you:

    • Rapidly work up the GeAI learning curve
    • Understand its core capabilities
    • Explore its potential value for your business

 

GenAI & Your Industry

A custom GenAI Industry Report to ensure you understand key industry use cases and expected GenAI adoption rates.

Assessing Your GenAI Readiness

A targeted GenAI Readiness survey that will clearly measure your commitment to adopting GenAI and your high-level readiness across the five ‘Keys to Winning’.

Defining a Clear & Compelling Vision to Win with GenAI

A streamlined GenAI Vision development session, with applied examples, to collaboratively define your GenAI Vision in as little as 60 – 90 minutes. 

Defining an Integrated GenAI Strategy & Roadmap - A Closer Look

Target Duration

30 - 60 Days
(depending on leadership availability)

While its potential is compelling, successfully leveraging GenAI will require an integrated approach and sustained collaboration across your company. Virtually every group will have a role to play, and you’ll need to:

  • Define an integrated strategy that solves multiple challenges in parallel
  • Solve for Secure & Responsible AI requirements from the start
  • Build momentum for GenAI adoption while closing foundational talent and capability gaps
  • Embrace iterative innovation and accelerated solution delivery
  • Enable aligned adaptability as ‘what great looks like’ rapidly evolves

Accelerated Innovation has developed a streamlined GenAI strategy development solution that enables our clients to rapidly:

  • Align on a clear and actionable 12 – 18 month ‘Strategic Intent’
  • Define your specific ‘Keys to Winning’ with GenAI
  • Prioritize an integrated portfolio of initiatives, based on your specific needs
  • Identify ‘Quick Win’ opportunities
  • Define clear and aggressive measures of success
  • Identify and mitigate potential GenAI adoption risks
  • Define an actionable and adaptive GenAI Roadmap for accelerated results

 

Igniting Your GenAI Journey - A Closer Look

Target Duration

1-2 Quarters

While success with GenAI will be a journey, in the early stages of adoption you’ll need to:

  • Clearly communicate your GenAI vision and sustain energy and momentum for the change
  • Create a sandbox where team members can safely explore GenAI
  • Bring GenAI capabilities ‘to life’ for your teams with targeted solutions
  • Solve for a wide range of talent and capability gaps
  • Make sure you have the integrated insights to continually optimize your approach

Accelerated Innovation specializes in enabling and maximizing the impact of your GenAI efforts.  Our integrated ‘GenAI Adoption Lift-off’ solution focuses on:

  • Amplifying your GenAI Message to build energy and commitment for the journey
  • Delivering a set of high visibility GenAI ‘Quick Wins’
  • Systematically solving for Secure & Responsible AI requirements
  • Enabling a cohort of GenAI Champions to lead your unique journey
  • Closing key capability gaps to securely and responsibly scale your GenAI efforts
  • Ensuring you have the data-driven insights needed for real-time decision making
  • Establishing a light-weight operating cadence to get aligned, stay aligned, and deliver high-impact results

Accelerating Your GenAI Journey @ Scale - A Closer Look

Target Duration

Varied - depending on your specific scope

GenAI’s real impact occurs when you scale and embed its capabilities within your organization’s ‘core DNA’. To do so, you’ll need to:

  • ‘Productize’ enterprise-class GenAI solutions
  • Streamline innovation and solution delivery across your business
  • Scale your GenAI Talent enablement efforts
  • Scale robust GenAI operations, security and compliance functions
  • Adopt GenAI-enabled productivity enablers across your workforce
  • Accelerate your organization’s operating cadence to compete in an AI-enabled competitive landscape

Accelerated Innovation brings decades of strategic change enablement experience to help clients accelerate and scale their GenAI impact. Our integrated GenAI scaling solutions focus on:

  • End-to-End GenAI solution ‘productization’ and hardening
  • GenAI Innovation and Agile delivery optimization
  • Integrated Talent Enablement and Management, including:
    • Curated learning journeys for internal team members
    • Accelerated Talent Attraction 
    • Targeted 3rd Party Support where delivery pace is critical
  • Enterprise capability design, scaling, and optimization
  • Sustained GenAI transformation and risk management support
  • Scaled GenAI governance and compliance support

Adapting to Outperform with GenAI - A Closer Look

Target Duration

1 - 2 Quarters
(with on-going support as needed)

The pace of business is only accelerating, and leaders everywhere are working to keep pace. To compete in a GenAI-enabled world, you’ll need to:

  • Leverage real-time insights for data-driven decision making across your business
  • Continually monitor 3rd Party GenAI innovation, competitor actions, and evolving regulatory mandates
  • Iteratively adapt your GenAI strategy, plans and tactics
  • Accelerate your innovation and delivery of GenAI-enabled solutions
  • Deliver improved top and bottom-line results to compete

Enabling improved strategic adaptability is a core focus and passion for the Accelerated Innovation team. We partner with our clients to:

  • Architect integrated measurement strategies for improved real-time insights 
  • Leverage OKRs for increased clarity, alignment, focus and measurability across their GenAI efforts
  • Adopt quarterly Strategy and Planning cadences for improved alignment and adaptability
  • Embrace Outcome-based Roadmaps to clearly define their ‘True North’, while maintaining solution flexibility and pace

Closing Targeted GenAI Gaps to Maximize your Impact - A Closer Look

Target Duration

Varied - based on your specific needs and scope

Targeted gaps in GenAI talent and capabilities can significantly impact your results. Common challenges include (but are not limited):
  • Integrated GenAI Strategy
  • GenAI Talent Management
  • Master Data Management
  • GenAI Innovation Acceleration
  • GenAI Security
  • Adaptive Quarterly Planning
  • GenAI Architecture
  • GenAI Transformation Leadership
  • GenAI UX Design
  • GenAI Product Management
  • LLM Monitoring
  • GenAI Governance

Accelerated Innovation offers targeted, custom solutions to close specific client GenAI gaps, including:

  • GenAI Vision, Strategy & Roadmaps
  • Packaged GenAI ‘Quick Wins’
  • Integrated GenAI Talent Management
  • GenAI Capability Design and Scaling
  • GenAI Innovation & Agile Solution Delivery
  • Integrated GenAI Transformation & Risk Management
  • Integrated GenAI Measurement & Insights solutions
  • Adaptive Strategy, Planning & Governance practices