NOTE: This post is an excerpt of our ebook Leading with trust: A people-first guide to AI integration in healthcare. Click here to access the full publication.

Within any organization, the AI champion (or sponsor) is the leader who is ultimately responsible for building buy-in among colleagues, other leaders, and cross-functional teams for whatever solution they believe is worth embracing, whether it’s AI or anything else. Champions can also help connect the dots between an organization’s pain points. 

When the solution is AI, champions should think of their role as not just being the expert in the technology, but as someone who can help create the conditions for AI initiatives to be successful. Tim Creasey, the CIO of change management firm Prosci, tells the story of an “Innovation Cross-Pollinator” he once met at the YMCA, whose job was to find great local programs, package them up, and share them across the organization so others could benefit. AI needs that same spirit: leaders who can identify what’s working in one corner of the company and help set the stage to spread it across the rest.

Prosci advocates champions adopt an approach called the ABCs of Sponsorship (and it’s worth reading their full breakdown here). Worth noting, there is a correlation between being an effective champion and an initiative meeting its objectives.

One added challenge AI champions face is what Creasey has referred to as a “never-ending Phase 2.” Because AI is changing so fast, and new use cases are arriving constantly, implementations and the communications around them need to change in real-time. This is why champions must make business objectives clear upfront: For example, “We are using AI to solve [specific challenge.]” While the tactics (for example, the AI vendor or AI approach) may change along the way, ideally the reason for the initiative shouldn’t.

“Reinforcement becomes an active process of continuous readiness rather than a finite goal,” Creasey writes. This further emphasizes the importance of ongoing communications to and support for impacted groups within your organization.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to strategically adopt AI, and set your teams up for success, you can download a full copy of our guide here.

Or, if you’re ready to skip the book and talk to us directly, you can reach out to schedule a demo or have a conversation to learn more right here.