Working Smart In the Al Era: How to Be Efficient, Agile & Sustainable - Get Ready for Disruptive Change and Fast-scaling Growth

WORKING SMART

IN THE AI ERA

How to be efficient, agile & sustainable - get ready

for disruptive change and fast-scaling growth

EFWA HAGSTRÖM

Copyright © 2019 Efwa Hagström.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

ISBN: 978-1-6847-1464-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6847-1477-3 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Interior and Cover Image Credit: Efwa Hagström

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date:  01/17/2020

ENDORSEMENTS

This book provides a platform for kicking off a conversation with your team to improve your game. A must-read for all of us who appreciate inspiration on how to structure our business – and how to engage people, so we master the great opportunities ahead. – Jon Erik Høgberg, COO Itera Group

Are you looking for easy ways to develop as a leader and cope with the pressure? Do you want people to join you in change processes? Or, work even smarter together? In this book, you’ll find plenty of interest and value. – Marianne Groven, Director Sustainability Elopak

I highly recommend this book. Time is here to think fast and new in an efficient way. This book is an important and relevant contribution to leadership in a digital time with high speed of change. I especially appreciate the author’s ability to focus on people and collaboration. Human relations will continue to be important, and here you get easy and good advice on how to collaborate and communicate to develop individuals and the organization. Keeping it simple is often the best! – Hilde Kristin Herud, CEO, Norgips Norge AS

Efwa’s methods and knowledge is a must" for everyone who wants to practice collaboration. Slow down, read the book, try the methods. The result will be a community with belonging, engagement, and job satisfaction. Work smarter and reach your goals faster! – Vivil Hunding Strømme, Senior advisor NHO

We believe in developing our employees. I’ve participated in Efwa’s course in communication- and change management. The methods were easy to learn because they build upon core human behavior and give you a great foundation for further development. It’s essential for companies’ results to develop leaders and have a more inclusive, modern leadership style. The world is changing. We need to change too, and this is a fabulous book for companies and leaders to do so. – Even Skistad, Warehouse and Distribution Manager, Norgips

To succeed, I’ve learned how important it is to anchor what we do from the board to the top management group and throughout the organization. There’s enormous power when you get everyone on board. People need to feel seen and valued. You must be allowed to try new things – both winning and losing. How to create such a culture? Read this book.

– Steven Foss, CEO Fosstech

Working Smart in the disruptive AI era directs focus on opportunities and challenges related to environments requiring increasing and faster adaptability in organizations. Properly assembled leadership teams that work toward clear, defined goals will be able to leverage AI in a way that increases competitiveness. In this book, Efwa Hagström has accumulated research and experience from many years of work with organizational development, and the book appears almost like a recipe book that you can pick from to optimize your own organization’s behavior. – Gisle Skansen, CEO, TORP Sandefjord Airport

I’ve personally used the methods described in this book. My experience is that it includes and motivates participants in change teams and ensures a lasting change – resulting in modernization, increased efficiency, and competitiveness. To us impatient leaders: Slow down to speed up – it gives results! – Christian Omholt, COO, Kongsberg Space Electronics – Norspace – Horten

For a long time, change management has been on everybody’s lips and for good reason. Disruption of business models, rapid development of technology, and not least, application of new technologies call for more than change – it calls for more profound transformation of the way we work and collaborate. Many leaders and organizations realize this but at the same time find it difficult to actually act on this insight. Efwa Hagström’s book provides a framework for working with this transformation by dividing it into smaller chunks, making it digestible. – Dr. Lone Hass, Chief HR and Communications Officer, Elopak Group

Finally, a book that focuses on the place of humans and organizations in a world driven by digitalization. It’s easy to get caught up in the praise of what digitalization will lead to - and to forget that people and organizations are behind and must make the important choices. My experience is that in order to make good choices that lead to good implementations, the entire organization must be aligned - Efwa Hagström shows in a good and educational way what it takes to get there.

– Sverre Gotaas, CEO Herøya Industripark AS

With a broad background from HR and organizational development, Efwa Hagström gives us useful tools and reflections. Digitization and AI are going to disrupt established structures and she shows how leaders need to change to succeed. Let Efwa inspire you to meet tomorrow’s working life and challenges. – Toril Roberg, MSc, Production Manager, REEtec

This book is about how to be efficient, agile and sustainable – and getting your leaders, teams, and organization ready for disruptive change & fast-scaling growth – so you work smart in the AI era.

FOREWORD

Applying the best of humanity

After more than 25 years as a top-level leader in the IT industry, I am both excited about the opportunities with technology and AI – and concerned. As humans, we are no strangers to adapting to new technology. It has happened again and again throughout history. But the pace we experience today is unheard of.

We (the Earth) certainly have a need for change today. We cannot go on as we have for the last 50 to 100 years. At the same time, we now have powerful technology that can help drive that change. The digital era with AI in the center could potentially help us solve our times’ biggest challenges - education to all, energy demand, sustainability, climate change, poverty, evolving democracy, and health issues. What if we can?

Also, we see the signs – warning us of the dark side of digitalization if not handled right. We are challenged to the core of how the world is organized, how we work, and how we create value. The transformation challenges us to apply the best of humanity. High-quality critical thinking, ethical judgment, changeability, creativity, and smart collaboration are required for the task. Indeed, we’re offered a more human focus while living in a technology-driven world. We should take that offer and work smart in the disruptive AI era.

The fourth industrial, digital revolution is upon us, and it has the potential to change everything. How we, as leaders, organizations, and humans, deal with it will influence who benefits from the development and, at the same time, determine our legacy.

Steinar Sønsteby

CEO ATEA ASA

Atea is the market leader within IT infrastructure in the Nordic and Baltic countries. Steinar Sønsteby has more than 25 years of experience with top-level management leadership and 30 years of experience in the IT industry.

RIGHT NOW!

New conditions can be a threat, but also provide unexpected possibilities. With disruptive, digital elements like AI and robotics radically enhancing, changing, and challenging how we work – what does smart leadership look like?

Also, how, and why is it that some companies grow incredibly fast? They even thrive in this complex, changing world shaped by technological, environmental, and societal paradigm shifts. What do they do that you can do, too? And why care?

You care because of mind-blowing business opportunities and because of unexpected competition coming from easily scalable companies – some even growing at an exponential pace. That’s why smart leaders and boards ask:

How can we efficiently – and at a low cost – work smarter to ensure speed and organizational readiness in the disruptive AI era?

Trends changing the game

Right now, several trends are changing the game, the speed of the game and how we play. Digital elements allow breathtaking, exponential business growth. AI and robotics are enhancing, changing, and challenging what we work with and how we work. Complexity is increasing, and at the same time, our planet is suffering, requiring urgent remedies. Young people want action now. Customers want experiences, rapidly delivered- and connected solutions, and they care about sustainability more than before. Talent wants to make a difference.

Future-proof and cope

The pace of development is demanding. To future-proof and cope, new ways of working, leading, executing strategy, and creating value are emerging. The difference between quick and slow companies – and winners and losers – is clearer than before. The gap is widening. No wonder most leaders feel pressured to increase agility, innovation, and efficiency in what we could call the disruptive age, the sustainable age, or the AI era. As artificial intelligence (AI) can create disruptive solutions and will highly impact our work-space, challenging what humans are best at – and even enhance human capabilities – the AI era is a suitable umbrella term.

The winners’ secret

HOW you work is one of the most important decisions leaders and boards make in the AI era. It’s easy to think it’s all about technology and artificial intelligence. But the winners’ secret is they know how to efficiently and rapidly unlock human intelligence and knowledge. They align their business model with a future-oriented organization to unleash potential and scale their business rapidly. As Kimberly Lein-Mathisen, GM Microsoft Norway, says so well:

Artificial intelligence is like a speedboat. Along with [human] emotional intelligence, it gets the power of a supertanker.

What’s exciting is that by constructively using the synergistic power of human and artificial intelligence, we may have a chance to solve even really complex and urgent challenges like the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. However, with technology’s dazzling opportunities, one could wonder: is human intelligence in danger of being overshadowed? That would be unfortunate because, as Kimberly continues, Artificial intelligence without [human] emotional intelligence is simply less clever.

Agile and efficient in the context of AI

A major goal for writing this book is to inspire action so you can become more agile, innovative, and efficient in the context of AI and fast-scaling, or exponential growth. Be aware of the impact from AI on leadership, value creation, and humanity.

Human advantage

In contrast to technology, we humans have a great advantage. Fortunately, customers, partners, leaders, employees, and you all have various human intelligences, senses, and yes, feelings. They differentiate us from technology (at least for quite some time), and are critical elements to be aware of, use, and develop. They are key human skills and capabilities that are priceless in the disruptive and entrepreneurial AI era. The World Economic Forum says it well: "The answer to technology disruption lies in our ability to apply humanity to the challenge."¹

Staying relevant

Even though robots already are becoming more creative, they are much better at repeating what has already been done. Humans, on the other hand, can be excellent at creating and collaborating and are necessary for understanding, inventing, evaluating, and implementing solutions. So, to keep up with technology and to increase speed and innovation, we need to stay relevant – and leverage core human intelligence and capabilities in our organizations. Examples are creativity, critical thinking, and empathy. How can we do that time- and cost-efficiently? What kind of leadership and organizational conditions unleash the best in people in the disruptive AI era? And how can we prepare ourselves and adjust to the big changes we know are coming?

These are relevant questions for any leader to ask. What we accomplish will depend heavily on how good we are at working smart together as humans. It was important before and is even more so now. Together we have the power to move mountains.

Unaware leaders

Sometimes we don’t work smart. We like to think so, but we don’t. Instead, we create mountains and barriers to success – sometimes even disastrous failure. Leaders across industries are, to their surprise, working more anti-smart, inefficiently, and destructively in their use of resources, time, and effort than they think – not doing what they think they spend time on.² Busy leaders are typically unaware of their impact, thinking they’re efficient but sometimes causing costly disturbances. Unintentionally and without knowing it, some methods and ways of working are implemented that hinder and counteract the achievement of goals and innovation. As speed of change increases, this becomes more important to mitigate.

Why the giant fell

What I’m about to tell you is an old story, but it’s a useful one, so stay with me. Why exactly did Apple win the smartphone fight with Nokia? It turns out it wasn’t primarily due to technology. Recent research shows the root cause of why the giant fell was that the organization was ridden with destructive human interaction that caused an anti-innovative internal climate.³ It’s hard to understand, but between 2005 and 2010, Nokia’s managers weren’t working smart together. They worked and behaved with a mixture of operational focus and hierarchy, poor cross-collaboration, and poor communication. "We found that top and middle managers’ shared emotions during the smartphone innovation process caused cycles of behaviors that harmed both the process and its outcome", says Vuori and Huy (2016).

Misunderstandings, rivalry, infighting, and fear of failure were all symptoms of low emotional and collaborative human intelligence inhibiting agility, innovation, implementation speed – and eventually competitiveness. Not smart and not sustainable. Nokia made it easier for competitors to break up their global dominance, and they lost the fight. Apple won.

True for many

Just like for Nokia, efficiency, agility, and innovativeness suffers, and the cost can be high. Opportunities can be missed. Valuable knowledge and efforts that could have been used for good causes and value creation are sadly wasted. Working hands-on across industries as a human high-performance trainer, I know the above Nokia picture, with misunderstandings, busy leaders, infighting, and poor cross-collaboration, is true for many – and with hand on heart, maybe also for you?

I want to make leaders and HR more aware of this phenomenon, its impact on strategic execution, innovation, and efficiency, and what to do about it so we can be as agile and constructive as we need to be these days.

But while machines will beincreasingly powerful, humans will actually be more essential.

- Dave McKay, president, CEO, Royal Bank of Canada⁴

So can you

By making smarter use of humanity in business, we can make smarter use of information and data, customer feedback, opportunities, and technology. While there’s a huge focus on AI, technology, and digitalization, the new leadership and new ways of working are founded on the human capability to be entrepreneurial, scale with minimal bureaucracy, and work smart together. The winners already do. And you can too.

We’re moving fromoptimizing - to digitizing - to humanizing the way we work.

Set up to win?

It’s becoming difficult to survive as an average company. Digital or not, today all companies need to tackle rapid change, complexity, and disruption one way or another and sooner than later. When outside circumstances change so dramatically, it needs to be reflected inside the organization, not only by a few individuals but systemically – preferably by the whole organization. Smart leaders and boards realize traditional ways of working are too slow, and ask - how do we transform and align our business with a matching organization to scale fast and be agile enough?

Winners excel at working smart and are organized to avoid bureaucracy and create and scale value rapidly – almost at an exponential pace. Don’t get behind. If you’re wondering how to unlock human potential and future-proof your organization in the AI era, but you lack knowledge about where to start – you’re not alone. I welcome you to explore three key factors, that when aligned create powerful synergy and help you navigate this new territory. Discover:

1. PACE: How exponential pace and fast-scaling business models require a different mindset, leadership, and way of working – and how it allows immense growth or may even sweep you away.

2. STRUCTURE: How your organization’s structure is a barrier or blessing for sufficient agility and efficiency – and how to transform your business into a cross-collaborative, agile, and entrepreneurial organization ready for scalable or exponential growth.

3. PEOPLE: How your people’s creative, collaborative, and emotional skills and intelligence can be upleveled and unlocked to tackle complexity and rapid change – and how new leadership and ways of working bring out the best in your people.

Be efficient, agile & sustainable - get your leaders, teams, and organization ready for disruptive change and fast-scaling growth.

The accelerating principle

You’ll soon learn how the Slow down to speed up principle can help you, your teams, and your organization work smarter. It’s a mindset, that’ll help you succeed easier with the people part of work and reduce anti-smart work. It’s especially useful for mobilizing people in change initiatives – and it works independently of how far you’ve come on your digitization and organizational transformation journey. It’ll help you accelerate and speed up overall.

Meant to guide and inspire

For decades, I’ve questioned how leaders and teams can work smart(er) – training them hands-on in communication, self-leadership, change-management, creativity, and collaboration. This book is my humble contribution of connecting the dots, passing on knowledge, and framing useful concepts to help you. Most are based on many years of studies, research, and extensive experience working across industries and company sizes. A lot of hard work is done for you. While I recognize that the content can be challenged and further developed (I hope it will), expect to find plenty of tried-and-tested tips, useful methods, and cases. You’ll get insight from global research – not the least of which from three co-contributors with valuable and varied backgrounds. Some things are new; some things you know – absorb what is useful for you.

The language is purposely more practical than academic, meant to guide, encourage, and inspire action. When possible, improve your business not only on an individual, but on a systemic, organizational level. I invite you to slow down a bit and lift your eyes from operational issues. Gain input to understand how you can leverage your human capability and organization so you thrive in the AI era.

I congratulate you on your curiosity and desire for development. We’re at an amazing tipping point. Please help make this world a better place the way you can. Together we can make a difference. Right now!

Photo: Rita Myrseth

You’re always welcome to contact me.

Yours warmly,

Efwa Hagström, MSc Global HRM

Founder of

www.WorkingSmartTogether.com

and www.Lederhjelpen.no

1. PACE

We’re exploring:

• RAPID GROWTH: As business pace transforms from linear to easily scalable, entrepreneurial, or even exponential growth, how does this impact leadership and how we work?

• SPEED OF VALUE CREATION: Digital business can grow exponentially – why and how does this change the game and speed of value creation?

• A USEFUL PRINCIPLE: The principle "Slow down to speed up" is very helpful for increasing agility, speed, and human collaboration – how can you apply it in your daily work?

ANOTHER KIND OF PACE

Imagine

What’s both frightening and amazing right now is that exponential business can create and grab huge market shares so quickly. Just see what Amazon, Google, and others have accomplished in a short time. Digital businesses can accelerate at a speed that analog businesses simply cannot follow – because AI and digital have exponential ability. This means businesses with digital elements can scale and grow with an exponential curve instead of a linear. The difference is tremendous, impacting development and leadership to the core. It takes getting used to. Speed is increasing for everyone, and this is dramatically challenging how we think. Our minds are used to analog linear business and set on scarcity – with growth expressed in %, for example 5%. The exponential mindset, however, is set on abundance, aiming at rapidly scaling and multiplying growth.

PS. The legend about rice and the chessboard powerfully illustrates exponential growth. The first grain of rice (or wheat) at square one is so harmless, but when doubling the total with each square, it soon becomes clear the amount will become enormous. At square 14 (out of 64), there are already enough grains to cover the whole chessboard. At square 64, the amount of grains is astronomical: 18,446,744,073,709,551,615. Now, as one gram of rice equals around 64 grains, it means every person in the world gets 37.4 tons of rice. Legend has it an Indian king underestimated the cost, laughing off the proposed payment of doubling a grain of rice for each square on a chessboard. The king went bankrupt.

The doubling phenomenon

The doubling phenomenon may take many business leaders by surprise. I don’t want you to underestimate the power of exponential growth like the Indian king in the rice and chessboard story did. It won’t help to think this is irrelevant for your industry. AI and digitalization will impact all industries, including health care, education, transport, manufacturing, and high-tech engineering. If it doesn’t affect you right now, it will soon, and you’ll possibly be overrun by exponential business models and scalable technology faster than you can imagine. Even if not doubling and growing at an exponential pace, some companies sustainably scale their businesses much faster than competitors. How do they design, structure, and lead their organization to minimize bureaucracy, increase agility, and unlock human potential? We’ll look at that in Part II and III.

For now, let’s explore some aspects of exponential growth – also useful for rapid, easily scalable, and agile growth with an entrepreneurial approach.

Think BIG

We are used to working towards set goals step by step, improving and becoming a little better each day and expanding at a linear pace. For example, if a taxi service expands by two cars (each serving twenty passengers per day), it can serve forty more customers per day. This is the kind of linear growth we are used to. However, with exponential growth, you can think really big and realize dreams within a much shorter time frame than before. After the preparation phase, it takes off at an exponential pace instead of linear. Imagine growing your business, or parts of your business, exponentially. Besides the potentially enormous profits, what impact would you like to have? Many companies are adopting social and sustainability impact into their strategy. Imagine solving some of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at an exponential pace instead of linear. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Catch up with Google?

With traditional, linear business, you can catch up with competitors. You can take another shot, improve, and try again till you make it. However, in exponential business, catching up can become very challenging. Is it even possible to catch up with Google and Amazon? Probably not. Rather, you’ll have to create a different, disruptive (and exponential) concept to conquer these giants.

Loading your arrow

With digitalization, the world gets more complex, uncertain, and interconnected.⁵ Unlike linear, incremental growth, which stepwise encourages you with proof that you are heading in the right direction, the preparation phase in the exponential growth curve has a more uncertain, entrepreneurial, and accelerating pace. It takes courage. You’re loading your arrow – opening up, experimenting, and trying to find out what you can scale exponentially. You’ll need to experiment more and faster than with linear growth. Fail fast. Learn fast. Adapt. Preferably, work in self-driven teams. Encourage and reward experimentation. Avoid procrastination, which often comes from insecurity or fear of making the wrong decision. Many have the all or nothing mindset, waiting until everything is perfect before acting. Agree on how to evaluate what to keep and what to discard, and on what the minimum is for going forward, and act accordingly.

The preparation phase can be noisy and discouraging, tempting you to give up excellent ideas. Things may appear to move too slowly, with little proof of progress. Remember to communicate and celebrate any progress (failure and success), even if small, and remind yourselves of where you’re going.

From A to B like an agile jaguar

In exponential business, you may not be able to see around the curve from point A to point B (which is easier with linear business). Point B means one of several futures, X, Y, or Z. They change quickly and are affected by external factors like market, technology development, customer preferences, etc. So, rather than aiming towards a point X, choose a more general direction, evolving into a point B. Be adaptive when navigating complex waters – like an agile jaguar hunting to find the best point B.

Expect more emotions

In addition to the need for agility and high speed, expect more uncertainty. Expect the need for higher capability and professionality regarding people-oriented emotions, issues, and situations. Members of autonomous teams are more exposed to adverse behavior and emotionally challenging situations than other workers.⁶ Insecurity, disappointment, trial and error, impatience, confusion, resistance, and heated discussions can be very time- and energy-consuming. The big question is if they are mostly constructive or destructive. If we want to be agile, we can’t afford to spend a lot of unnecessary time, focus, and energy dealing with destructive noise from inefficient communication, collaboration, and execution.

Reduce the noise cost

This cost needs to be well managed and reduced to a minimum. Leaders can’t avoid human issues and emotions if they want to be agile and innovative. Emotions can often be uncomfortable to deal with, though, so leaders tend to avoid them. That’s a mistake I don’t want you to make, and in Parts II and III, we’ll go in-depth about what you can do to reduce noise from interactions and become more efficient at managing emotions (yours and others). We’re moving from a focus on optimizing to digitizing to humanizing how we work.

When Bill Gates and others - like Jeff Bezos speak of using intuition and gut feeling for making important decisions (even though Amazon is built on a technology-based, digitalized, and exponential business model) - it shows how important the human part of business is. Exponential pace is different and faster. Line of sight is more unclear. You’re entering new territory. It takes courage to make decisions the human, intuitive way, not being able to rely solely on analysis. You’ll want to shorten the preparation phase by mastering the art of people management extremely well. Learn more in a few pages about how to Slow Down to speed up.

Keeping your cool

When disrupting your product line or business model, you’ll need confidence and perseverance to make it through the first entrepreneurial, exponential phase. Expect both excitement and uncertainty – you’re loading your arrow. Companies (startups or established) that endure the first phase, find a scalable business model, hit an emerging trend at the right time, and support it with a suitable organization, will take off – likely leaving competitors behind. This is what Google, Amazon, and others have done. You’ll need to keep your cool, take a leap, develop, adjust, prepare, and then take off.

CONTRIBUTION FROM KIMBERLY LEIN-MATHISEN, GM Microsoft Norway:

Efwa: Kimberly, how is exponential business different?

As technology reshapes the face of business, every organization of every size across the globe is tasked to keep pace with an unprecedented rate of change – to reimagine how they empower their employees, engage their customers, optimize their operations, and transform their products. Companies that have committed to their digital transformation are seeing tremendous payoff in differentiated financial results, shown in research by MIT/Sloan School. Benefits shine through in the form of more engaged employees, better data insights, and faster pace of innovation. And they are exponential.

DISRUPTIVE ENOUGH?

Which pilots to prioritize?

With increasing complexity and so many possibilities arising quickly, knowing which projects or pilots to prioritize and continue with is a challenge. The danger is that you spread your efforts too wide. Lift your eyes and mind from operational issues once in a while to narrow your scope. Analyze external factors