Autonomous Transformation

14The Multiplication of Expertise: A Leadership Imperative

Clearing the fog around nascent technologies, such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, digital twins/simulations, robotics, and virtual and augmented reality, has proven to be an insurmountable challenge for most organizations. This is part of the reason only 13% of data science projects make it into production.

Each of these terms has reached a degree of semantic satiation, the psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds.¹ Moreover, many conversations begin with the assumption that there is a shared understanding of the definition of a given technology, when it is more likely that that is not the case.

If five people sit down in a conference room to discuss artificial intelligence, for example, setting aside each individual's emotional sentiment regarding their idea of the technology, their understanding of its inner workings and application will almost necessarily vary.

Because uncertainty registers as pain in the brain, as discussed earlier in this book, and leads to further confusion, lack of clarity is one of the greatest threats to an organization and it is the responsibility of leaders to push through this uncertainty until clarity and mutual understanding is reached.

But how?

Asking technologists to “dumb it down” damages the dignity of industry and business team ...