Harvard Business School Professor Explains The Real Reason Your Team Is Resisting AI

So my first question, through your research, you found that fear of being perceived as over-reliant on AI can reduce worker performance.

How can organizations design incentives or cultures to overcome that image concern barrier?

That's a great question.

I think that we are running into a crisis of reliability right now.

And I don't think I have the perfect answer for you yet, but it's one I definitely strive to gain more knowledge on in the next years as I start my research at Harvard.

What I'm going to say is that we are in a crisis because the signaling, basically environments that we've been very used to rely on, like Those that signal skill, those that signal effort are being destroyed by how AI operates.

And we are not adjusting in the right way necessarily.

So now we have these AI tools that we get provided with at work.

And there's basically a confounder between showing how much effort you put, how much skill you have, how good of a judgment you have when you are using these tools.

So it just becomes impossible to disentangle how good you are as a worker when you are using the AI tools to assist you.

So the fact that these two signals are conflated and signals that we used to think before were very important at the workplace, now they are getting substituted.

Substituted for what? I'm not sure at the moment, but we need to evolve our systems, our signaling devices, for provide workers another way to show their added value.

And firms need to understand that and provide that structure and that incentive scheme to provide workers with basically the trust in the system and with the incentives to do as good as possible without being afraid that how they might be perceived by how they use AI.

Agreed.

I've seen that on the ground at companies and other organizations that I've worked with, that fear that your research speaks of where I see people hiding their AI usage.

And that can really be a problem for leadership because one, new tools and new ways to use the tools are coming out at a rapid pace.

So from my perspective, you don't want to see your staff hoarding that knowledge.

You want to create a culture and environment where it's safe to share what the advancements are.

If folks are finding more efficient ways to get workflows done, then that's a positive thing.

I know, as you said, we don't have all the answers to this, but I think the first step is what you're doing, which is just acknowledging that AI is transformational technology and it brings about ripple effects.

such as what you were talking about, that these signals are changing and that can lead to change behavior.

One of the things that I recommend to my clients is that leadership model AI usage to help to create that safe environment so that it's not seen as something that, oh, we only use AI in private, but AI is something we publicly talk about collaborating with the highest levels to show that we are an organization that values these sorts of collaborations is one of the things that I found to be effective so far.

I completely agree with you about the leadership.

I think that's like a no-brainer first step that organizations have to embrace, like leading by example, like having an open dialogue about how to implement these tools.

But I feel that that's not enough.

So my first question, through your research, you found that fear of being perceived as over-reliant on AI can reduce worker performance.

How can organizations design incentives or cultures to overcome that image concern barrier?

That's a great question.

I think that we are running into a crisis of reliability right now.

And I don't think I have the perfect answer for you yet, but it's one I definitely strive to gain more knowledge on in the next years as I start my research at Harvard.

What I'm going to say is that we are in a crisis because the signaling, basically environments that we've been very used to rely on, like Those that signal skill, those that signal effort are being destroyed by how AI operates.

And we are not adjusting in the right way necessarily.

So now we have these AI tools that we get provided with at work.

And there's basically a confounder between showing how much effort you put, how much skill you have, how good of a judgment you have when you are using these tools.

So it just becomes impossible to disentangle how good you are as a worker when you are using the AI tools to assist you.

So the fact that these two signals are conflated and signals that we used to think before were very important at the workplace, now they are getting substituted.

Substituted for what? I'm not sure at the moment, but we need to evolve our systems, our signaling devices, for provide workers another way to show their added value.

And firms need to understand that and provide that structure and that incentive scheme to provide workers with basically the trust in the system and with the incentives to do as good as possible without being afraid that how they might be perceived by how they use AI.

Agreed.

I've seen that on the ground at companies and other organizations that I've worked with, that fear that your research speaks of where I see people hiding their AI usage.

And that can really be a problem for leadership because one, new tools and new ways to use the tools are coming out at a rapid pace.

So from my perspective, you don't want to see your staff hoarding that knowledge.

You want to create a culture and environment where it's safe to share what the advancements are.

If folks are finding more efficient ways to get workflows done, then that's a positive thing.

I know, as you said, we don't have all the answers to this, but I think the first step is what you're doing, which is just acknowledging that AI is transformational technology and it brings about ripple effects.

such as what you were talking about, that these signals are changing and that can lead to change behavior.

One of the things that I recommend to my clients is that leadership model AI usage to help to create that safe environment so that it's not seen as something that, oh, we only use AI in private, but AI is something we publicly talk about collaborating with the highest levels to show that we are an organization that values these sorts of collaborations is one of the things that I found to be effective so far.

I completely agree with you about the leadership.

I think that's like a no-brainer first step that organizations have to embrace, like leading by example, like having an open dialogue about how to implement these tools.

But I feel that that's not enough.