Uplifting AI Understanding and Organizational Capability
In an upcoming study by Amrop’s Global Digital Practice, we will explore differing approaches to leadership, and the ability to derive competitive advantage, with respect to the application of AI.
In preparation, we have been speaking with leaders of midsized companies, venture-backed businesses and larger corporations who have all shared their experiences in leveraging AI strategies for their organization and customers.
One of our interviewees is Alex Trott, the Managing Director and Data and AI Lead at Accenture, Australia & New Zealand. Among other AI-related questions, he talked to Fiona Getty, Partner at Amrop Australia and a member of Amrop’s Global Digital Practice, about the ways they’re uplifted the whole organization’s capability and understanding with regards to AI, and about taking their clients along on their AI journey.
Fiona Getty: Have you had to create an initiative to up-skill the management and employees, and what development tools have you or do you use?
Alex Trott: Yes, we use two approaches. One is around how we use the tools ourselves – and that’s through general training, trying those things out. And then there’s role-specific training, for example, one of our engineers would look at some of the tools that could help them and there’s training around those. But the bigger thing that we’ve done is basically uplift the whole organization’s capability and understanding. The word we like to use is “curiosity” – so, it’s actually about uplifting everyone’s curiosity around Gen AI, because what we want is for all our people, when dealing with clients to be versant in Gen AI and have a point of view for how it works as a technology, how it affects industries and the companies of our clients.
Fiona Getty: How do you implement that?
Alex Trott: We have a large program called TQ – meaning “Technology Quotient”, as in EQ or IQ, but for technology. It is a program for all our 750 000 employees and has levels you can reach, so there’s training that people can take and then do courses around that. There are modules for 15 different technologies, like Cloud, Data, Edge Computing, Gen AI and so on, and we’re trying to introduce a gamification aspect in it. For each of the modules there’s between 1- and 5-hours’ worth of online videos and exercises, followed by an assessment at the end of it, which helps you enhance your TQ.
Fiona Getty: Is this training program available to your clients too?
Alex Trott: We’re making the platform available to our clients as well to help them with the TQ in their own organizations. One of my responsibilities is to uplift the capability of our Australia business around Gen AI, which is part of TQ, and we now offer the training program to our big clients as partnership and to others as paid engagement to help them.
Fiona Getty: Would you say that the use of AI and your approach to the training of your team is giving you a competitive advantage in the market?
Alex Trott: I think so. Our advantage is the depth and that we’ve actually been working with AI on ourselves, as in our technology and our operations business, and therefore, I think we have real practical experience of it as well as just training. We can then use that to go to market, it gives us a good advantage as well. I’m not sure that we’ve packaged it as well as we could – I think our marketing around it can be uplifted, but we’ve got the underlying ability, we just need to sell it better!
---
To find out more, reach out to Fiona Getty or the Digital Practice members in your country!
Our upcoming AI study will include analysis, conclusions and recommendations in the context of Amrop’s Digital Competency Model and the Chief AI Officer profile in the coming months.