From Productivity to Prosperity: The AI Shift Leaders Must Embrace

Business leaders have spent the last few years showcasing a masterclass of mistakes. They have misunderstood, misread, and mistreated the business landscape and their people. Amidst uncertainty and disruption, they clung to outdated beliefs about work. Now, leaders face the AI Reckoning, a moment that will shape our future. Are they ready to learn from their mistakes? Are they prepared to embrace AI? Are they willing to deploy it for profit and the good of their employees and society? If not, they will become mere blips in history.

In 2020, COVID-19 and racial injustice riots shook the world. Yet, leaders refused to accept this. They denied that employees had woken up to the vision of more purposeful lives. Soon came the era of the Great Resignation (or Great Reshuffle). Leaders bit their lips and submitted to the needs of a hot job market. They responded with what came cheap: money in a no-interest market and empty promises. At the same time, they enjoyed record business growth and high executive pay. Then, macroeconomic turbulence hit, and they demanded payback from talent during the Great Restructuring (or Great Rightsizing). Corporate communications quickly shifted from "we care about well-being" to "Well, oops, we are sorry” and eventually “Well, suck it up!”. With the promise of AI, leaders are further pursuing a narrative of doing more with less.

While leaders may assume that the ball is in their court, the reality is far from it. Top talent still demands three principles from their employers: respect for meaningful lives beyond work or status, support with flexible work, and acknowledgment of employees as activists for social causes. They need authentic, transparent, and accountable leaders who balance business and societal impact. Efficiency is vital in tough markets, but long-term productivity and innovation require an environment where employees feel valued and engaged.

Leaders face a paradox in the race to capitalize on the power of AI for productivity. AI adoption requires humans to be in the loop. Meaningful adoption will only occur when we've designed it for the human experience. There is a trust deficit between employees and leaders, driven less by AI itself and more by how leaders with poor track records will use it. Employees feel unprepared and anxious about their future roles, fearing obsolescence.

The jobs most at risk from AI automation are jobs occupied by women and minority racial groups. These repetitive task jobs often serve as entry points into the corporate world for neglected communities, offering pathways to dignity and affluence. We risk losing the progress made toward DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging) at work. Critics might argue that individuals are responsible for reskilling to adapt to new technologies. While individual initiative is important, organizations must support their employees through these transitions. Investing in reskilling can ease fears of obsolescence and unlock the full potential of a workforce in an AI-enhanced future.

This calls for a shift from the current Productivity-Only AI model. It emphasizes cutting costs at the expense of worker well-being and creativity. We need to shift to a Prosperity-First AI model, which champions AI's potential to improve human life, promote fairness, and ensure sustainable progress alongside economic growth. AI can enhance financial success. It can also create opportunities for meaningful work, support lifelong learning, and improve work-life balance.

The Prosperity First Approach to AI:
It’s not just touchy-feely!

A Prosperity-First approach isn’t for the faint-hearted who value short-termism. It is a long-term strategy for success, balancing productivity and employee well-being to build a prosperous organization. This organization is in a perpetual virtuous cycle, using efficiencies enabled by AI to improve employee engagement and business growth by reinvesting gained capacity and capability. This means reskilling employees for AI, cutting inequities, reducing burnout, exploring innovation, and pursuing big bets. This boosts employee engagement and trust, leading employees to keep funding this cycle.

This approach isn’t a fluffy touchy feeling campaign. It is about building a competitive advantage by acknowledging that employee well-being strengthens the business and benefits society. It reflects a holistic understanding of strategic value creation.

• Productivity Only AI Model: Focuses on efficiency and cost reduction, with workflows centered around automation and optimization metrics.

• Prosperity First AI Model: Integrates the focus on efficiency and cost reduction from the productivity-only model by designing it to enhance the human experience, engagement, well-being, creativity, inclusivity, and equitable experience.

Here are examples of how the two approaches play out in different use cases:

Building a
Prosperity-First AI Strategy:
3 Steps for Leaders

1. Adopt a Prosperity-First True North and Accountability Measures for AI Adoption. Reframe your organization's AI strategy to include financial and customer success, innovation, employee engagement, and a culture that embraces DEIB. Set ambitious and relatable true north metrics of AI adoption to galvanize employees. Assess AI's value by how much it helps your people, not just how much it can do with fewer people. 

2. Put Employees in the Pilot Seat: Empower employees as active participants in AI's integration, allowing them to define how their jobs get redesigned. This will bridge the trust deficit and pave the way for AI and humans to work as colleagues, improving the human experience. Grant employees the freedom to use AI in their workflows according to their needs and preferences. Enable channels for continuous feedback between developers and end-users to co-create better AI tools.

Co-designing AI deployment with employees will cut long-term costs. Changes are often needed after implementation to customize end-user needs. This also means making sure that technology is accessible to all employees. This includes women, people of all races, and those with disabilities. It also means involving many voices in the design process. 

3. Commit to Responsible AI Development; Integrate AI Ethically and Inclusively:

Go beyond talking about AI ethics by embedding it into your organization’s DNA. Follow privacy and fairness principles and invest in efforts to retrain and uplift the workforce. Ensure that AI solutions consider and address the needs of the most vulnerable, including women and underrepresented racial groups. Adopting a Prosperity-First AI model requires ethical frameworks that focus on the human experience at work.

Read our summary of research (shared below) exposing why AI Ethics in corporations are set up for failure and covering foundational ethics frameworks as they apply to AI adoption. 

Ethical and inclusive AI practices are not only right but also pragmatic. They lead to better, flexible solutions. These solutions can serve more people and reduce bias risks. They also help with brand reputation. Responsible AI development is a foundation for true innovation. It ensures that progress is sustainable, trusted, and aligned with societal values. This prevents future ethical dilemmas. Such dilemmas could harm an organization’s reputation and erode user trust.

Conclusion:
Pioneering an Ethical, Prosperous AI Future

It's time for leaders to pivot from viewing AI as a tool for efficiency to seeing it as a team member in building a more inclusive, prosperous, and profitable future. Adding ethics to AI initiatives and putting people first can ensure that technology helps make business and society fair, just, and thriving.

This future vision is possible and vital, allowing AI to reach its full potential to improve our work and lives.