Category: AI
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The Shamrock Organisation
Something like fourteen years ago (crikey) I wrote about the concept of the shamrock organisation, and it’s something I’ve found myself coming back to, notably in my thinking around agentic AI. In the late 80s Charles Handy, in his book The Age of Unreason, used the shamrock metaphor (he was Irish of course) to describe…
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The Agentic Organisation (redux)
I really believe that AI agents are going to upend everything from organisation design, to strategy formulation and execution, to workflows, to how we interact with data, to how people get stuff done. It’s going to bring such fundamental change that we need to start thinking now about how we can take a more deliberate…
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The progression of AI agents
I truly believe that with AI agents we are on the cusp of huge change – in organisation design, strategy, operations, staffing, customer experience – just about any and every area of the organisation will be impacted. And as I wrote a few weeks back, the agentic organisation will operate a lot differently to the businesses and…
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Productive and Generative learning
I came across Tony O’Driscoll’s ideas around productive and generative learning via Robert Guidi’s LinkedIn post which seems to have stirred up quite a bit of debate in the comments about the future of AI learning & development. Anyhow, I was interested in the delineation which Tony makes: Productive learning is about efficiency and applying…
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Why critical thinking is even more important in the age of AI
I was really struck by this post from Dr Philippa Hardman who has done a fantastic job of reviewing five recent studies on the impact of Gen AI on learning. Many have hailed the potential of generic LLM tools in supporting learning but as Dr Phil points out, an increasing body of research suggests that generic AI…
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Brands, and Latent Space
Reading Jack Smyth’s reflections on the recent BRXND Marketing x AI conference in LA I came across the idea of ‘latent space’ as it relates to brands and LLMs. I confess I’d not heard the term before so I did some digging to find out more about what it means, and I think it’s a…
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On the Agentic Organisation
The next wave of AI innovation is already upon us, and it’s the era of agentic AI. In fact, OpenAI’s CFO Sarah Friar has already said that ‘agentic’ will be the word of 2025. The pace of progression has been remarkably fast from simple chatbots that were primarily designed to engage in conversation, answer questions,…
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Using GenAI in strategy, research and insight
Last week I ran a virtual version of the Advanced Application of AI in Advertising course that I put together for the IPA. One of the key topic areas is about how to use GenAI tools in the strategy and planning process which I think is an endlessly shifting but fascinating topic. I genuinely think that integrating…
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Perspective blindness, and using AI to challenge your thinking
‘20 years after my own graduation I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliche about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper more serious idea. Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious…
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‘Good enough’ prompting
I really liked Ethan Mollick’s thoughts this week about ‘good enough’ prompting for AI tools. He references a study of Doctors using GenAI tools which revealed some interesting observations around algorithmic aversion (our hesitancy to take advice from machines when they conflict with our judgement, even when the machine may have a higher degree of…