Skills and the AI-ready organization: four things to consider

The rise of (and hype around) generative and agentic AI requires IT leaders to rethink the makeup and management of their teams. Finding the right skills is tough, as is establishing who ‘owns’ AI both within the IT department and across the wider organization.  

We discussed these issues in the most recent episode of our Global Tech Tales podcast, and below are four talking points we covered.  

You can watch the episode here or in the box below: 

Organizations are staffing up for AI in very different ways

AI changes are impacting all organizations in both direct and indirect ways.   

IT leaders need to skill up for the use of AI within organizations. That can mean having developers trained in using AI tools to generate code, or transitioning people from doing downstream tasks to managing agents to take on that toil. Even if agents can take on roles currently being done by humans, someone needs to manage them. 

The indirect impact of AI on skills and staffing may be greater. Building the AI-ready organization is having a knock-on effect in terms of infrastructure, cyber security, and data management.  

Organizations who are repatriating data from the public cloud need data center operatives – something they may not have had to think about for some time. Use of AI may drive exponential output but that in turn massively increases security risks and the need for computational power. And for most organizations an AI-acceleration requires a serious upgrade in data management and strategy.  

When you talk to IT leaders you can see that organizations are handling both direct and indirect impacts of AI in very different ways.  

From a pure AI perspective most organizations are looking at some combination of training and enablement for all staff, and hiring dedicated leaders to drive forward change. In other roles it is hire and train just as hard as you can. But no-one has a perfect scenario, and most organizations are trusting in good people solving problems as they go. 

IT will enable AI to drive efficiency

A recent Forrester study showed that productivity losses from IT-related delays can cost $1.5M to $3M per 1,000 employees. IT departments are considering use of AI and automation to address this issue. 

Talking to IT leaders we would say this is more conceptual than real for many organizations today. But there is increasing acceptance that one of the quickest routes to return on investment with AI is in making operations – including IT support – significantly faster and more efficient by layering over AI with human oversight.  

Let technology take the strain of the vast volume of activity so that a human can be inserted when needed most at either the strategic level or when a mission critical problem needs to be solved. From an IT support perspective this means training AI to prioritize tickets, and identify where most problems can be dealt with without human intervention. 

Who ‘owns’ AI is not decided

As generative and agentic AI gets deployed across enterprises, IT groups may find themselves competing with other lines of businesses for AI-related projects. At the same time IT leaders are finding themselves interacting with business leaders more often. With regard to AI, IT is once again trying to find the between being an enabler and a killjoy.  

This is very organization dependent and speaks to a dichotomy we have discussed in previous episodes of Global Tech Tales: AI inside vs AI outside.  

On the one hand: doing what we do already but faster and cheaper. On the other developing new products, services and processes that are built from the ground up using AI.  

In both scenarios IT is both a service center for the ‘real business’, and a strategic partner and enabler to grow and develop the core organization.  

Readers of CIO.com know that this is not a new thing – it is why we have CIOs, CTOs, and IT directors. But it’s another trend that AI is adding to. (See also: Cloud in the age of AI: Six things to consider.)

IT leaders feel they are under pressure

The tenure of IT leaders is becoming shorter, and CIOs tell us that their stress levels are growing.  

This should not surprise us.  

Digital transformation and change management were always stressful. Geopolitics and world economies are making many industries unstable which adds further pressure to all leaders.  

The rise of AI means we’re living through an acceleration in an industrial revolution, so we should absolutely expect tenure to be low and stress high.  

Be kind to your IT leader friends.