How is AI shaping your everyday work?

AI maturity is measured wrongly.

People count automations, assisted workflows and roll-outs. Consultants draw maturity models in which being advanced means the number of processes. Nobody asks the most important thing: what did you get done?

In my view AI maturity is measured by what has been created. By decisions, results, mistakes avoided. Not by the number of tools but by achievements. The machine has no value in itself. The result has.

My own maturing over the past year has been clear. I no longer consider board work without an AI-assisted situation room sensible. At least not the best possible way to work.

This is not a vision. The first board meetings have already been held in an AI-assisted situation room, and several of my companies are building a recurring process of their own for the board around it.

The most important lesson so far: AI does not change how we calculate. It changes what time is spent on and what decisions are based on.

What it means in practice:

  1. Preparation is better. Forecasts, scenarios and background material are ready before the meeting, looking in the direction of travel and not in the rear-view mirror.
  2. Conversation is better. Meeting time is spent on thinking and choices, not on going through reports.
  3. Decision-making is better. Decisions are based on an up-to-date situational picture, not on a month-old slide deck.
  4. The decision is always human. The machine calculates, the human decides.

The goal is simple: better results, better-used time and mistakes avoided. Those are the three measures by which AI maturity is worth measuring. Everything else is theatre.

AI has come into leadership to stay. We will see the results in the coming years, and the difference will be between those who built a situation room and those who stayed counting their workflows. It is pointless to fight the inevitable.

What have you achieved with AI?

By Ville Tolvanen. Originally published in Finnish: Miten tekoäly muokkaa arkeasi?. More in English: Aura Boards — start here.