Think about a time when you were stuck on a project and asked a team member to step in. His or her alternate perspective likely sparked new ideas, shattered assumptions, uncovered unexpected insights, and maybe even helped you catch overlooked errors. This collaborative approach isn’t just helpful—it’s transformative. It’s a simple truth: Multiple perspectives yield better results.  

Now, picture scaling this collaborative power across an enterprise-wide AI transformation. That’s the essence of what North Highland’s AI Center of Excellence (CoE) is striving to do—leveraging the collective wisdom of our diverse workforce to drive innovation.  

In this installment of our docu-series, we’re explaining why successful AI initiatives aren’t built in silos, but through the diverse voices and experiences of an entire organization. We’ll also explore how embracing and prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) serves as a powerful differentiator in our journey. Read on to find out how:

Pillar 2: Inclusive Decision Making

The allure of AI lies primarily in its vast potential. It’s versatile, customizable, and when implemented strategically, can be used to reinvigorate every facet of an organization. But the other side of that coin is that harnessing the breadth of AI’s potential requires a deep, contextual understanding of organizational needs—one that is best attained through inclusive decision-making.  

Without inclusivity, AI business initiatives risk falling short of their potential.  

What we mean by this is that overlooking or ignoring diverse perspectives from across an organization often leads to negative outcomes—stemming from misaligned solutions, unseen use cases, low adoption rates, and overall disruption. And this often happens when leaders are more focused on the technology itself, rather than the true determinant of AI ROI: the people using it.  

A people-first approach—one that prioritizes inclusive decision-making processes—enables leaders to tap into the well of insights within the organization, leading to initiatives that are comprehensive and valuable. This approach also reminds employees that their expertise is valued, creating an environment where people feel empowered to lean in and contribute meaningfully to AI initiatives.  

“Unsurprisingly, engaging your human coworkers is quite like how we engage with AI – iteration through 1:1 conversation. Both require personal time and effort invested to yield positive results. A people-first approach means that the richness of North Highland’s voices necessitated many conversations with personal stakes. Logic and data are proof points, but they do not alone create excitement and changes in ways of working. Only people can do that.“

—Luka Anic, Senior Director, Technical AI Program and Product Manager

At North Highland, our CoE team has developed an inclusive decision-making process by actively seeking input, feedback, and ideas from employees of all levels and specialties. Funneling diverse expertise into strategic planning has helped:  

• Uncover gaps in strategic initiatives by leveraging insights from stakeholders across multiple areas.
• Break down functional silos and prevent new ones by creating channels for cross-team collaboration and communication.
• Mitigate risks and potential biases by diversifying testing environments and incorporating a wide range of perspectives on new tools, which has also enhanced both the rate and quality of our problem-solving.
• Strengthen alignment between AI initiatives and real-world business applications by directly involving end-users and stakeholders in the decision-making process.
• Drive engagement and adoption by creating a sense of buy-in and ownership of initiatives among employees at all levels and in all functions.
• Establish a feedback loop to support continuous improvement by maintaining open channels—like our Champions Program—for ongoing input.  

Most importantly, our inclusive approach to change ensures that we’re implementing AI in a way that sets our teams up to truly capitalize on its vast capabilities—while also feeling valued, heard, and invested in the firm’s AI odyssey.    

Let’s look at two ways our CoE has prioritized inclusive decision-making:

#1 Engaging stakeholders 

Engaging stakeholders builds trust, addresses concerns, creates opportunities proactively, and helps align AI initiatives with the needs and values of those most affected by the change. For these reasons and more, it’s been central to our people-first approach.

Stakeholder input has been a high priority for the CoE team since the early stages of the AI journey. But engaging people effectively was initially (and in some ways still is) a matter of trial and error. We want to share a real example of stakeholder engagement, that despite being less than perfect, sparked ideas that are shaping current and future phases of work.  

In April 2024, CoE members hailing from London to Seattle met at our Atlanta HQ for a weeklong, in-person workshop. Sessions were dedicated to troubleshooting existing workstream challenges, road mapping upcoming activities, visualizing impact, and preparing for the workshop finale: A live stakeholder demo. In this closing session, CoE workstream members reported status updates and presented plans for future work to a select group of influential leaders in the firm.  

The demo did not go perfectly: For starters, there was confusion about some of the team’s initiatives, concerns about alignment, and questions as to how upcoming work would tangibly drive business value. However, it proved to be a key learning opportunity that fundamentally increased the value of the CoE. Stakeholders’ feedback uncovered blind spots, offered deeper organizational context, and sparked ideas from which our AI initiatives are already benefiting.  

This experience also reminded the CoE of the importance of empathy in maintaining a people-first AI transformation. Prior to this demo, the CoE had not fully considered others’ (stakeholders, in this case) perceptions, needs, and challenges surrounding AI-related change. We take a deeper dive into the role of empathy in a people-first approach in our blog, “AI Odyssey: Trust, Transparency, Empathy.”  

“The stakeholder exercise drew on our own leading change methodology—encompassing elements of behavioral science and design thinking—to really connect with individuals and collectively drive change through relationship building and trust. But this is just one instance of how inclusive decision-making empowers our transformation. Regular stakeholder engagement remains a cornerstone of our approach.” 

—Ella Smith, CoE Behavioral Science Lead  

Plus, there have been other, more tangible benefits of engaging our stakeholders during and outside of the CoE workshop:

Use cases. Feedback from both the brainstorming session and the demo sparked fresh ideas for untapped use cases. Our stakeholders’ firsthand experience and unique perspectives uncovered previously overlooked applications. And as AI capabilities (including the tools) continue to evolve and expand, this ongoing dialogue will help ensure that our people advance alongside our technology.  

Understanding areas of impact that drive business value. Stakeholders are the subject matter experts of their business areas, offering invaluable contextual insights that help the CoE visualize AI’s impact across the firm. These insights inform decision-making in a way that makes initiatives strategic and meaningful for every corner of our business. And stakeholders play a crucial role in catching potential flaws or oversights that could be good for most of the firm, but negatively impact others. They act as a system of checks and balances for AI-related change. Not only does this contextual intel make AI more valuable for end-users, but it also drives business value by:  

• Ensuring the CoE pursues applications that are useful across the spectrum of firm functions.
• Pushing initiatives to be more comprehensive and far-reaching.  
• Strengthening capabilities that allow us to support our clients through change and transformation.  
• Building bridges between established teams.

To put it simply, this inclusive decision-making process has supplied the CoE with fresh thinking and contextual feedback that is setting them up for results that translate into firm-wide impact.

Champion expansion. The CoE already had a goal to expand and progress the Pilot and Champion programs. But the stakeholders helped design a clearer roadmap to get from point A to point B by suggesting other teams the CoE could bring into the program that might enhance its output. Tapping into these previously underutilized groups is already yielding more diverse, detailed insights on potential solutions for our suite of tools. Stakeholders are actively shaping how these tools can best serve our organization's needs.

“The strength of the champion network lies in word-of-mouth which tends to create real, as opposed to mandated, excitement to engage in new ways of working. Champions have been orchestrating lunch-and-learns and similar events for their teams. These types of gatherings encourage active participation and interaction with both facilitators and AI tools, and the frequency of the events is growing as word spreads.” 

—Luka Anic, Senior Director, Technical AI Program and Product Manager  

Diversifying playgrounds 

In the pursuit of decisions and strategies that have fewer biases, more holistic thinking, and are aligned with a wider range of employee and business needs, the CoE has also been diversifying playgrounds. In other words, we are testing AI tools across various firm functions and employee levels to obtain feedback that is thorough and representative of our unique needs and capabilities. Doing so has been made possible through our Pilot and Champions Program, which you can read about in our recent blog, AI Odyssey: Learning Through Play.

Diversifying playgrounds is fueling our transformation in a few ways:

First, it’s helping us make smarter investment decisions. It’s unlocked a feedback loop that is generating insights that are both comprehensive of and fine-tuned to:

• Organizational initiatives.
• Specific tools being evaluated for use.
• Relevant use cases.
• Unique and diverse functional needs.

Testing the latest and greatest across diverse capabilities and needs is allowing us to pinpoint the tools that offer the greatest value and predict those that will have the strongest utilization and ROI.  

“Most of us are used to actively jumping from Chrome to PowerPoint to Word to Outlook. The same will likely happen with AI tools, with different tools acting as aids for different tasks. While Copilot excels (pun intended) at seamlessly integrating with all your Microsoft emails, Teams messages, and files, many of us turn to Claude when we need to write on a complex or new topic. Canva might help prepare a Marketing campaign while Synthesia could open doors to unparalleled prerecorded messaging and training abilities. The AI industry is still moving at such a fast pace that predicting when and where it will stop is next to impossible – but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ride the wave to the end.” 

—Luka Anic, Senior Director, Technical AI Program and Product Manager

Second, like engaging stakeholders, diversifying playgrounds accelerates our CoE team’s ability to identify optimal use cases. Think about it: With more teams, testing more tools, for more objectives, we receive more comprehensive reporting. Employees are like fingerprints. Each one is markedly unique—in the way they strategize, approach tasks, and support the firm. By tapping into the creativity and uniqueness of our people, we expedite the discovery of use cases.  

Third, the expedited exploration of AI capabilities is enhancing our upskilling and reskilling programs (Learning and Development). Our diverse playgrounds are rapidly developing practical knowledge that informs the CoE about:

• Prompting best practices.
• Hallucination identification and prevention.
• Secure and responsible AI interactions.
• AI-related risk navigation.

Firm members need other critical skills and knowledge in their arsenal to safely and effectively capitalize on AI in their roles. The insights flowing from these testing playgrounds have already expanded our training criteria, resulting in programs that are realistic and relatable to real-world client applications.  

Finally, diversifying playgrounds ensures that our people have a voice. They are the ones who will be using the tools day in and day out, and we want them to have access to solutions that align with their roles, objectives, and ways of working. And this feedback, in turn, helps the CoE make evidence-based decisions that drive real-world value, optimize tool selection and implementation, and enhance overall adoption rates across the organization.

Inclusive AI: Unlocking collective potential

Inclusive decision-making is the key to accessing an organization’s collective wisdom and using that knowledge to design AI-related initiatives that align with priorities and resonate across teams.  

At North Highland, this approach has already yielded tangible benefits: Uncovering hidden use cases, aligning AI initiatives with real-world business needs, and fostering a sense of ownership that drives engagement and adoption. But perhaps most importantly, it's creating an environment where every voice contributes to our AI narrative, ensuring that our transformation is as diverse and dynamic as the people it serves.

As we look ahead, we're excited to explore how trust, transparency, and empathy further enrich our people-first approach to AI. Join us in the next installment of our AI Odyssey series, where we'll delve into these crucial elements that form the bedrock of our ongoing transformation.