Why Culture is Key to Realising Gen AI’s Potential

In the spirit of this article, the above image was created using GenAI.

With Gen AI so top of mind for organisations right now, it is a really important time to take stock of what kind of culture will be necessary for organisations to reap AI’s huge potential. 

By their nature, AI initiatives are an augmentation of human ingenuity, the Gen AI technology engines that integrate data and knowledge into meaningful insights, and the human beings who are inputting the questions or requests. And that all sits within the social/political/economic contexts that shape the worldviews of the data inputters and receivers (the humans) 

What this means is that organisational culture will shape and influence the way Gen AI is used and applied, and Gen AI will shape and influence organisational culture. 

What culture is necessary for Gen AI to thrive? 
In many transformative movements (e.g. TQM, Agile), an organisation's culture has a huge impact on the success of implementing these new philosophies and technologies. While there will be nuances regarding the adoption of Gen AI, such as different skills training required and a different way of applying the technology, many of the cultural inhibitors that have been the "pebble in the shoe" of previous transformations remain.  

Some of the key inhibitors to effective Gen AI implementation that we have observed with our clients and communities include: 

• Issues around data sharing, ethics, and siloed thinking. Many teams, individuals, or functional units often feel (whether it is real or not) that they would be breaching the confidences of their customers or clients if they were to share the data more broadly. This can lead to data not being shared and can limit the capacity to understand interdependencies across a system. 

• Critical sense making. While Gen AI is extraordinary, it is only as good as the data it relies on and the assumptions and biases of the people programming and training the data. There are many examples (such as 'show me a picture of a felon') where Gen AI applications have demonstrated significant and distressing social biases. Relying blindly on Gen AI without discerning or fact-checking is potentially dangerous. 

• Role of leadership. Leadership has often been touted as the major influence on culture. Ed Shein's research suggests that the top three influences on culture are what a leader measures, rewards, and pays attention to, what a leader role models, and how a leader responds in times of adversity. In cultures where leadership is equated with control, there may be significant limitations to how much people will embrace Gen AI or feel trusted to embrace it. 

• Individual worldviews and beliefs. Gen AI provides the potential to democratise knowledge beyond particular disciplines, and identify patterns, consistencies and inconsistencies across disciplines and expertise. To fully embrace this requires expertise to be held lightly and an openness to multiple perspectives or insights that may challenge our current ways of thinking. In short, it requires us to be deeply open and adaptive.  

• Comfort with disruption. While the uptake of Gen AI offers enormous benefits, for many of us, it won't be without its challenges. Fully embracing its potential may disrupt our traditional ways of working. The types of roles that are being created and the types of roles that may disappear are already creating significant uncertainty. 

• Sense of identity. Advanced Gen AI applications may also disrupt our ideas of ourselves and our place in the world. For example, what becomes of my sense of self-worth if Gen AI suddenly can write something that is indistinguishable from my writing? 

Attributes of cultures that can support the adoption of Gen AI will focus on learning, self-awareness and development, adaptiveness, and a radical leap in collaboration that requires a whole-of-organisation mindset. At Adaptive Cultures, we describe this as a Collaborative Growth Culture. 

In our next article, we will explore how organisations can create the conditions for Gen AI to be fully embraced.