Our management team gets nervous whenever we discuss artificial intelligence because they think it is a risky distraction. How do we present these technical upgrades to our leadership team so they see them as low-risk operational improvements?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The easiest way to eliminate resistance to technical upgrades is to change your vocabulary. Never sell artificial intelligence to your leadership team. Instead, pitch operational improvements that machine learning will enable, mentioning the technical mechanics only as a footnote.

Refrain from calling your initiatives machine learning projects or AI implementations. Instead, frame them as operations-improvement projects that use machine learning. When you present an initiative to your department heads, focus entirely on the operational bottlenecks you are solving.

For example, instead of saying you want to implement an AI chatbot to automate customer service, pitch a project to reduce first-response times on technical support tickets from twelve hours to five minutes. Explain that the project will achieve this by automatically drafting responses to common queries for your team to review and approve.

By keeping the focus on your operational metrics, such as capacity, response times, and error rates, you strip away the hype and the fear of the unknown. Your managers will stop viewing the technology as a threat or a shiny distraction and start seeing it as a practical tool designed to help them hit their weekly Scorecard targets and achieve their corporate Rocks.