Purpose
The purpose of this discussion is to promote the sharing of ideas and perspectives on why and how leaders need to embrace and leverage technology to create “value”. Please recognize that value manifests itself in many forms: financial; market and competitive advantage; realization of DEI initiatives; employee motivation and wellbeing; improved communication; supportive organizational climate and culture, etc. This discussion will enable you to derive (and share) key insights and skills associated with leveraging technology to improve team, project, and organizational performance.
Task
You are encouraged to use your own organization for context but may use other organizations if you wish, provided you are very familiar with them. The familiarity could be from your prior experience or from reliable articles you have read about those organizations. You are also encouraged to use appropriate ChatGPT (or other LLM) prompts to address some aspects of the questions below that may not have been fully covered in the narrative and readings.
Using the narrative, readings, your own experience/observations, or information/articles from any other source (which you should cite appropriately), and in about 600 to 750 words, please respond to the following:
- Describe a situation in which a leader’s effective use of technology (or the lack thereof) has generated substantial value for an organization (or destroyed value). Make sure you address what value was created/destroyed.
- Provide two data science/analytics tools/techniques which leaders could leverage for decision making, monitoring and reporting performance, and providing predictive and prescriptive insights that enhance performance. The word “performance” here could be in the context of either teams, projects, programs, or even an entire organization and could be one or a combination of financial, productivity, goal realization, competitiveness, innovation, etc.
- Briefly summarize the types of AI tools and techniques that have business applicability and comment on their capabilities and limitations as well as bias and ethical concerns associated with their use (and how those concerns could be addressed).