Can AI really help you achieve your organisation’s goals?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is certainly a hot topic at the moment. It seems to be everywhere. AI this. AI that. OpenAI. ChatGPT, Bard, Meta AI.

At Stellafai we’ve always had a hypothesis that artificial intelligence and machine learning will provide some very valuable features in our Outcome Coaching Platform. In fact, we gave a big nod to AI when agreeing our company name… StellafAI.

I’ve also been somewhat of a cynic about AI. Is it just another fad… another buzz word… the technology flavour of this year that will move on to something else soon? Is it like the infamous Microsoft paperclip office assistant (the most complex yet unwanted features in Microsoft products in the 90s)? Is AI just another iteration of a growing world of “can I help you?” chat-bots?

We had a major turning point in our thinking last November. During a week co-located as a team together, we did a mini hackathon to explore if/how AI might really enhance and add value to our product. The innovation and experimentation that happened that week have triggered the cogs and excitement by the potential ever since.

How can AI help provide a more open, a more thriving and a more connected organization? Can AI really help you achieve your organisation’s goals?

Let’s get a few things straight…

1 — AI will never replace human collaboration…. But it can provide a platform and insights for better conversations

We’ve built “a key result suggester” where AI can consider an organisation’s North Star and North Star objective, explore the goals you’re aiming for and recommend some high quality measures to use against them. We don’t ever expect AI to suddenly replace humans in defining measurable outcomes. However it can provide a better starting point by drafting some key results — something to work from and something for us to layer our own context, conversations and experience over to improve further.

2 — AI will never replace the power of community…. But it can help strengthen understanding across those communities

Shared purpose guides participation. People feel equipped and empowered to make meaningful contributions to collaborative work. So when we can provide AI helpers the facilitate and guide better conversations, communities can feel more empowered. For example, small feedback loops on the quality of goals, the strength of the measures and where connections are best being made — these all provide a nice addition of contextual help.

3 — AI should never provide total transparency ….. But it can provide better and clearer access, guidance and nudges to help drive success.

Everyone working on an initiative and contributing to strategy execution should have access to all pertinent materials by default. People value both success and failures for the lessons they provide. AI can provide visibility to where otherwise invisible connections and impacts may not be understood. When one person or one team shifts the needle on one of their measures, there are usually ripples across other teams and throughout that organisation that AI can help report, alert and guide.

4 — AI may feel threatening to some — a risk that it will do harm…… But perhaps it can help provide better inclusivity and more security

The most powerful (yet often forgotten) ingredient to making tools like OKRs a success is having regular conversation guided by the measures and goals. We do this weekly. What measures have moved? What activities drove those movements? Are there repeatable patterns or methods others can leverage? What did we learn?

We’re excited by the application of natural language processing and AI working together to remove the friction of extracting and documenting the learning from these conversations. Check-in support tools can provide easy translation of this learning captured in audio, video, text, imagery and other means of conversation.

5 — It may feel like AI is taking over the world….. but, it can support better adaptability by making the complex easier to understand

Adaptable organisations have lots of feedback mechanisms that are accessible both to members of our organization and to outside members, who can offer suggestions. We should work to ensure that feedback loops genuinely and materially impact the ways people in our organization operate.

Stellafai already makes use of the fantastic 200+ methods catalogued in the Open Practice Library — a wealth of knowledge but sometimes overwhelming and not clear where to start. We’re testing an AI method suggester component that recommends just a small sub-set of these based on context, the goals you’re trying to achieve and any existing experiences of success using these methods. This can promote people working more transparently and share materials via common standards and/or agreed-upon platforms that do not prevent others from accessing or modifying them.

6 — AI + humans is greater than the sum of parts?

We’re excited by using AI as a supporting technology not a replacing technology. We have lots to learn and explore by its potential. We have the opportunity of even more to learn by what it gives us back.