Navigate AI's exponential growth; just 1 in 5 executives feels comfortable

It’s shocking that amongst the 45+ years old, about 26% use AI, and only 29% of organizations are prepared for AI. (source: Rijn Vogelaar ). In the meantime, the younger generation embraces AI (79%) and jumps on the exponential growth.

In short, on the senior executive level, 1 in 5 experiments with AI, while in the younger generation, 4 in 5 embraces AI. And not even 1 in 3 organizations are prepared for it. 

The business case: 10% win against 2% investment

The business case is quite simple: if you have a sh*tload of daily meetings and emails and need to read a lot of documents, AI can save you about 1h a day on these grinding tasks. That's about 4 hours a week, which is 10% of your time. The investment for Microsoft CoPilot is about € 360 per person per year, double that with training, and that's about 1 or 2% of the yearly salary. 

Not even to mention the business case on content production savings. You'll be able to produce faster, more efficient, and above all, better content with the same team.  More impact with less effort. I don't have specific numbers, as it's still too early days. I only have my own stats and data for my newsroom on thinklikeapublisher.com. 

The workload for me, myself, and AI is between 8 and 12 hours a week:  publishing 2x week new content on my newsroom, asynchronous distribution on 4 social channels, weekly email → 25.000+ unique visitors a year, and over 1.000+ email subscribers. 

My investment in AI and tools is about € 700 a year for ChatGPT-4, HeadlineStudio, Grammarly Pro, Canva Pro, and Notion. 

For the boomer management, I hope this is your wake-up call. The best time to start was yesterday; the next best time is now. If you don't step up your AI game, you'll fall behind, and it happens so much faster than you think. 

→ In 2024, AI will grow exponentially from experimental to essential.

What you need to know as an executive and senior manager

1. AI grows exponentially; realize that you don’t know what you don’t know
2. Embrace AI right now; if you’re not ready, your competitors will; this is also quite essential to keep your talent on board
3. Realize that the biggest advantages for content are cost savings and increased speed
4. Be aware of and prevent the loss of capabilities and over-reliance on technology by your staff

Immediate actions: what you can do right now

5. Learn AI yourself; boomers are not excluded
6. Develop a policy and safe environment
7. Talk with peers, learn, and grow together
8. Ask for help to be self-supporting in AI

Disclaimer and sources. In my copy, I simplify and round the exact numbers for readability and to make a catchy, engaging statement. Credits where credits are due, and before jumping to any conclusions, please check the sources. Apply what’s applicable to you and your organization. See the last paragraph for all the details: Rijn Vogelaar, Nancy Rademaker, and Jarno Duursma.

What you need to know as a senior manager

If you want to lead the way and properly manage a team to work with AI, you have to know a few things. 

1. AI grows exponentially

You don’t know what you don’t know, especially considering AI. You probably heard it’s going fast, yet you don’t realize how fast. The gap between AI-savvy and not-so-AI-savvy people grows by the day. So, if you didn’t start learning how to work with AI yesterday, the next best time is today. Like, now.

It's exponential and not linear growth due to data availability, faster processing times, and calculation speed because of tech innovations (we can process more data in less and less time), adoption of AI by people and organizations, and changing demands by society and business corporates. 

As said in the intro, 4 out of 5 in the younger generations experiment and learn AI, and just 1 out of 5 of the older generation do the same. So that gap widens. Rapidly. The sh*tshow is that it’s that older generation that’s in the management and leadership team.

Quote by one of my clients, a Senior VP for Events, once I showed him a few options to generate ideas for campaigns and write emails, ‘I didn’t know AI could do that and save so much costs and time’.

2. Start now; if you’re not ready, your competitors will

Don’t wait until your competitors speed up and take over. Start now because you need the time to learn to work with AI and catch up with the others who started yesterday.

It’s not only about using AI to produce better, faster, and more content; it’s also about the speed and agility of your marketing organization to react to the here and now with relevant content.

Next to that, if you don’t embrace AI, the younger talent will resign and choose another employer who does. To keep your talent, you’ll need to do this.

3. Realize that the biggest advantages are cost savings and speed

With AI, you can skip some steps with agencies, write sharper briefs, and do part of the ideation yourself. The better your brief, the less time the agency needs to debrief and develop concepts. Not only cost savings, also significant time savings.

If AI and your tone of voice are implemented, you can also use it to create content yourself. Use it to write multiple emails for a specific campaign to repurpose content assets for multiple channels, from long form to short form for email marketing to social savvy snackable. The options are endless; the only limit is your imagination and creativity.

4. Be aware of and prevent the loss of capabilities and over-reliance on technology by your staff

The downside of over-using AI is the loss of brain cells and grit by your employees. Make sure that you as a management team stimulate the employees to keep their expertise and problem-solving capabilities on par, stay analytic and critical to sanity check and challenge the AI output, and not over-rely on technology.

And lastly, to keep their social and personal skills high. The more we rely on technology, the less we actually have human contact. And we, boomers, know that the greatest ideas emerge and the best deals are made near the coffee machine.

Immediate action, what you can do right now

For you as a manager, it means you have to embrace AI and learn to work with it yourself. How can you manage and lead the way if you don't know the drill? 

5. Learn AI yourself; boomers are not excluded

You can’t manage the team and lead the way if you don’t know how it works. So you better get started to learn to work with AI and become that 1 in 5 of the older generation that embraces this. Ask for help, someone to get you started and experiment. The good news is, is that you can’t break AI and once you know a few tricks like how to write a prompt, it’s quite fun.

Remember, shit in is shit out, so if you write a crappy prompt, your AI output will be crappy as well. Tip: write your prompt as if you are giving directions to a 5-year-old: extended, detailed, and very long. Then you go prompt-on-prompt to narrow and get more specific. There’s no such thing as a one-prompt answer, nor a prompt of just one sentence.

And please, don’t be bamboozled by the one-eyed, self-proclaimed AI experts and cowboys. In the end, the old-school business, marketing, and communication principles still apply. The ‘why we do what we do’ hasn’t changed; it’s the ‘how we do what we do’ that’s changing with AI.

6. Develop a policy and safe environment

This is a no-brainer. Often, out of fear, companies forbid their employees to use ChatGPT. But you better realize you can’t stop them. So it’s up to you to educate them to keep their sanity and do it safely.

Educate on deep fake, that if it seems too good to be true, it is. And realize the privacy and data security implications of using freely accessible AI tools such as ChatGPT. You don’t want your business-critical information freely uploaded into AI, do you? So you better create a safe and secure closed environment for your staff to play and fool around with AI.

7. Talk with peers, learn, and grow together

The innovation and development of AI are fast and super-fast. What isn’t possible today is probably possible tomorrow. The growth is exponential. Let’s discover, learn, grow, and fail together.

Talk to your team. Talk to your peers. Don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo or to ask silly questions. We don’t know what we don’t know. And we’re in it together.

8. Ask for help to be self-supporting in AI

As mentioned above, learn AI yourself. Ask for professional help to nail it and understand it. Don’t hire an agency to do the prompts for you; hire an agency to teach you how to prompt. And how to keep your innovative, open mindset to keep up with the exponential growth.

Conclusion

In 2024, AI will grow from experimental to essential at an exponential pace. Best next best time to start is now. If you don’t, your competitors will or already did. And you’ll not only lose pace and, in the end, market share, you’ll also lose the battle for talent.

For the boomer management, I hope this is your wake-up call.

What you need to know as an executive and senior manager

1. AI grows exponentially; realize that you don’t know what you don’t know
2. Embrace AI right now; if you’re not ready, your competitors will; this is also quite essential to keep your talent on board
3. Realize that the biggest advantages for content are cost savings and increased speed
4. Be aware of and prevent the loss of capabilities and over-reliance on technology by your staff

And what you can do right now

5. Learn AI yourself; boomers are not excluded
6. Develop a policy and safe environment
7. Talk with peers, learn, and grow together
8. Ask for help to be self-supporting in AI

Now, it’s up to you to start with AI. 

Need help to start with AI today?

If you need any help with AI and getting your team started while hitting the ground running, don’t hesitate to drop me a DM on LinkedIn. 

If I'm not your designated person, I can certainly recommend someone in my network who can help you.  

Credits and sources

Before jumping to conclusions, be aware of all details and use the most recent information. I used these below, and every day, new research and stats pop up. What can be true today can be outdated tomorrow.

Nancy Rademaker. She nudged me in one of her keynotes on the exponential growth. If you’re looking for a speaker to tell the bigger story of innovation, AI, and its impact, without a doubt, book her. Her story and how she brings it to life blew me away. 

Rijn Vogelaar with research on the adaption of AI in the Netherlands (Q4 2023)

Jarno Duursma. He knows AI and has a refreshing approach. Give him a follow on LinkedIn for updates on AI that make sense. 

The vision of the Dutch government on AI and its impact on society

And Arne Mosselman, your man for AI and CoPilot implementation, for the details on the business case.