Videos
How Leaders Can Prepare for an AI-Powered Future
Insights
- AI readiness starts with leaders who continuously educate themselves on what’s possible.
- Meaningful returns require moving beyond low-risk experiments to high-value workflows.
- AI transformation depends on leadership, imagination, and champions across the organization.
Jared Spataro of Microsoft and Shishank Gupta of Infosys discuss how leaders can prepare their organizations and people for an AI-powered future. From building imagination and targeting high-impact processes to cultivating champions who drive adoption, the conversation emphasizes why AI transformation is ultimately a leadership challenge, not just a technology one.
Christine Calhoun:
What should business and technology leaders be doing right now to prepare their organizations and people for this AI powered future, Jared?
Jared Spataro:
Well, they have to educate themselves. I think they have to understand what's possible. That's really hard, Christine. It is. The technology landscape is moving so fast right now. I'm intimately involved and I can hardly keep up. So I have a lot of empathy for those who are trying to figure out what's going on. But it's important. I think you have to see it as a core part of leadership. A core part of what you do today as a leader is staying up with this technology because it's going to impact everything you do. Second, I think you have to develop some sort of imagination. Your ability to see the future through, in some ways, an eye of faith where you're like, this isn't the way the world works today, but the world should work this way and have some way to articulate that so that you can then work backwards and kind of meet today and tomorrow through, you know, your own leadership. Finally, I think you have to get out there and do more than experiment. A year ago, maybe 18 months ago, a lot of what we said was, yeah, start to experiment. But Shishank said it well. What ended up happening was kind of low risk and oftentimes low reward, low value type of activities where people, they didn't lose a lot, but they didn't gain a lot either. And they found themselves looking at each other asking, well, where's the return? If you want return, you're going to have to target some of your highest value processes, the workflows that really generate the value within your organization. You're going to have to go after those. You don't have to go in big ways immediately, but you do have to have some appetite for risk. If you don't do it, other people will. And that's what's most interesting is you really shouldn't outsource your disruption to somebody else as the market evolves very quickly. So I think you put those things together, you start to get a little bit of a recipe of what it looks like to be a leader. But I'll come back to the point that is so important to me. It takes real leadership at a time like this. When you are in a moment of transition, that is when leadership shows its face. That is when the reality of what your organization has to offer in terms of leadership is unmasked and unveiled. So it's a moment, let's go seize the day.
Christine Calhoun:
Shishank, what are your thoughts on seizing the day at this moment?
Shishank Gupta:
I think the opportunity is immense. And as Jared said, I think it's about leadership, believing that there is a difference that AI can make to our businesses in the way we run it and the way we visualize it. So it will need a combination of re-imagining our businesses in certain ways, because if we don't, somebody else will. So we have to reimagine our businesses, leverage AI in a way that augments what we already do, amplifies it. If I can use that word, look at the world of AI will move from augmented to autonomous. And the more we can move to that journey, not just because it's fancy, it's fashionable, but I think the value that we can unlock by going down that path is enormous. We will need to find AI champions. Jared said it in a way that we need leadership to stand up and do it. And I do believe we need champions. And champions will be a combination of leaders and some other people who are influencers in the organization. Because guess what? I don't believe this would just work with a leader on the top saying, let's do it. He or she will need champions and associates on the technology side and the business side and somewhere else and saying, hey, you know what, I'm willing to walk down with you in this journey and I want to be one of those early ones to do it. So we will need those champions to really be part of the story. And it is an exciting world. We will have learnings. You know, the ship has sailed. There is no looking back and we want to be on that ship. Then, you know, enjoy the rides and the adventures as we go along. It is an exciting time ahead and I'm really excited about it. Not knowing very well exactly what we will find, but I'm sure we will find something interesting, exciting, and whatever we do find, we will find answers to it as well.
