Equipping your workforce for AI transformation, with Ben Tasker

First and foremost, you're a part of like a very exciting time.

I mean, we all are, but you're on the front lines and you're leading large-scale AI upskilling efforts right now.

When you think about what organizations are getting wrong about preparing their workforce for AI, what are some of those things?

So right now, I like to think of the time period we're in as the AI between times.

We're not really into the future with robots yet.

We're heading towards that future, but we're not exactly out of the past yet either of our old systems and processes, what we're really relying on to get work done.

There's kind of a mismatch going on.

And I think one of the Most challenging concepts around AI is just because you have it, just because you have some AI tools doesn't really mean you have an AI strategy.

And the AI strategy also includes upskilling and reskilling for employees.

And I think a lot of manufacturers kind of feel stuck.

There's the we need to adopt AI approach.

Our workforce isn't ready.

Where do I even start? How do we even use it? Where should they start? If you're a manufacturing leader and you're listening to this, a lot of my listeners are in HR, but you know, HR has a lot of different things that they could be using AI for.

Just in general, when we think about manufacturers, where would they even start?

I always like to think of AI as a systems-based approach.

So a lot of organizations, including manufacturing, are using AI as a point solution right now.

So there's just one AI implementation or maybe a couple throughout the entire organization.

And sometimes that's successful, but most times it fails.

95% of

the time it actually

fails.

Where AI is successful is when you have that systems-based approach.

So you have many pain points throughout an organization, and then you flesh out those pain points and you understand your complete system.

So for example, in manufacturing, it doesn't have to be a complex system.

It could be instead of using papers and old processes, you can digitize those and put them into AI to better train employees.