Summary:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 Communicating with your Board of Directors about AI\/ML is different from conversations with top operating executive.\u00a0 It\u2019s increasingly likely your Board will want to know more and planning that communication in advance will make your presentation more successful.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Whether this comes in the form of being summoned to discuss and explain, or whether you, along with your CEO decide to proactively communicate, it will pay to consider in advance what that communication should include and what the message should be.<\/p>\n This will not be the same as addressing senior operating management and it\u2019s important to start with understanding what your Board of Directors does and doesn\u2019t do.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Job of the Board<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n From an objective standpoint, for-profit Boards have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders that requires two major types of activity, one advisory and the other oversight.\u00a0 In brief, that would typically include the following:<\/p>\n The most important issue here is that the Board does not formulate the strategy or manage the company.\u00a0 Neither do they direct what technologies or business models should be adopted.<\/p>\n Their role is fundamentally a conservative one, to review the work of others and protect the interests of the shareholders.<\/p>\n On a subjective basis, while Board members may be very senior in their experience of your and other industries, they may not be as well informed as you and senior management on new technologies and how to exploit them.<\/p>\n Second, their meetings are relatively short and infrequent, so unless specifically asked it\u2019s unlikely you\u2019ll get more than two hours to make your case, and even that may be generous.\u00a0 The best case may be that there is a standing committee of the Board for technology, but these are relatively uncommon.<\/p>\n In short, how do you keep your message relatively short but sufficiently deep to create understanding.\u00a0 What topics should you cover?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Education<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I would argue that this conversation actually requires two separate sessions, first one to educate Board members about what AI\/ML is and what it can do, and a second more substantive conversation about whether the company\u2019s approach to utilizing AI\/ML is correct.<\/p>\n While the education session will clearly cover many basics that don\u2019t need to be detailed here, it should include these topics:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Organizing the Strategic Conversation<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n In this conversation I suggest you think like a Board member and divide this into two broad topics along the lines they might think of it:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Value Conversation<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The first thing to understand, is that unless your company is one of the very few true leaders in adoption, neither your Board or your management will be thinking outside of the current business model.\u00a0 The question on their minds will be how to use these tools to improve current operations.\u00a0 If you need a refresher look back at our conversation that differentiates \u2018AI Inside\u2019 or \u2018Applied AI\u2019<\/u><\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 That list of opportunities should include at least these:<\/p>\n Just as important as Applied AI is the potential for evolving wholly new business models around data services and platform strategies<\/u><\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 This will be a dramatic diversion from typical thinking about your company\u2019s business model and its ability to hold off future competitors.<\/p>\n This is as much a part of the \u2018risk\u2019 conversation as it is a part of the \u2018value\u2019 conversation.\u00a0 If your competitors beat you to a platform strategy you might find your company just another commodity supplier in someone else\u2019s AI\/ML platform ecosystem.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Risk Conversation<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n To repeat, AI\/ML leaves your company open to be outflanked by competitors, especially in the area of platform strategies.<\/p>\n Separate from this however are two relatively operational risks.<\/p>\n Like CRMs and ERPs before this, the failure to create a central standardized approach and strategy will almost surely lead to greater pain later.\u00a0<\/p>\n As those individual applications of AI\/ML become increasingly important to the operation of their business units, they are likely to have been based on different analytical platforms, programming languages, and data sources and feeds.\u00a0 When the time comes that the case for standardization becomes overwhelming, the cost of tearing these out and starting over will be extremely high.<\/p>\n Best to start now with agreement on an overall AI\/ML strategy, standardized platforms, and methods of data governance.\u00a0 This also supports best use of financial and human assets.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Other articles by Bill Vorhies<\/u><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n About the author:\u00a0 Bill is Contributing Editor for Data Science Central.\u00a0 Bill is also President & Chief Data Scientist at Data-Magnum and has practiced as a data scientist since 2001.\u00a0 His articles have been read more than 1.5 million times.<\/p>\n He can be reached at:<\/p>\n Bill@DataScienceCentral.com<\/a> or<\/span> Bill@Data-Magnum.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Go to Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Author: William Vorhies Summary:\u00a0 Communicating with your Board of Directors about AI\/ML is different from conversations with top operating executive.\u00a0 It\u2019s increasingly likely your Board […] Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aiproblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aiproblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aiproblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aiproblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aiproblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aiproblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aiproblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aiproblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aiproblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aiproblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>As AI\/ML becomes increasingly important to company competitiveness and performance, it\u2019s increasingly likely that senior AI\/ML executives will need to engage with their corporate boards.<\/p>\n
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