How much should you integrate AI into your workplace? One company went too far, and faced a backlash from employees – and everybody else who heard the story. It’s important to treat as a tool to help people. It must be about people first, technology second.
How much should you integrate AI into your workplace? AI is a powerful tool, but one company went too far with it.
The company – a sofware company called Lattice – decided to embrace AI (good!) in their work. But they went too far and announced they were creating “digital employees” (bad!). These AI-based “employees” would have managers, performance metrics, a place in the organisational chart, and so on.
You might see where this is heading … !
Predictably, there was a backlash from employees. They were upset, not because AI was being elevated to the same level as humans, but because people might end up being treated like AI – just a “resource” to be plugged in, pushed around, and valued only for their productivity output.
Faced with this backlash, the company backed down and said they are putting the idea of digital employees on the back burner. Personally, I think they’re setting fire to it and never touching it again!
This story has an important lesson for all leaders.
Most leaders aren’t elevating AI to the level of people, but they don’t always know exactly how AI will fit into their team. The answer will be different for everybody, but start with this principle:
People first, technology second.
This has always been true with any technology integration or digital transformation – AI just happens to be the big hot topic now.
Many leaders and organisations are thinking about AI now, and in my opinion they are focussing too much on the technology and not enough on the people.
If you want this to work, you must bring your people on that journey. And that means treating AI as a tool to serve people.
If you get it right, it makes the journey so much better – for you, for everybody in your team, and for your organisation. But if you get it wrong, it can go very badly wrong – as it did with Lattice.
For more about bringing your people on the AI journey, join my online presentation soon about people-powered AI. It’s free, public, and open to everybody.
