Relationship between Artificial Intelligence and Leadership

I recently attended the Healthcare Information Management Systems and Society (HIMSS) 2024 conference in Orlando, Florida. As the Global Head of Agile Strategy, I represented Inflectra corporation looking up for learning about the growing influence of information systems in the healthcare space. It was wonderful to see the various improvements in the healthcare space in pre-clinical, clinical, and post-clinical stages of drug development, various healthcare and life sciences spaces like ambulatory care, hospital management, emergency care, neonatal and pediatric spaces, and endless array of devices and software products that support these areas. 

One thing that I saw written in many of the sessions, keynotes, exhibitors, and conversations among the attendees was the influence of artificial intelligence. Unlike many other audiences, these discussions were not just on large language models or generative artificial intelligence but also on deep machine learning algorithms within their line of work. While people talked about training data, prompt engineering, privacy and security considerations, there were only a very handful of sessions that I can count in my one hand that I was exposed where people talked about digital ethics or leadership. 

One of the expert panel speakers at the onset of the conference keynote commented about Steve Polack's quote, "... before talking about artificial intelligence, let us talk about natural stupidity!" History has taught that there have been a lot of lessons learned but we continue to learn the same mistakes due to personal egos, bias, labeling, stereotyping, and plain unwillingness to learn. This is one of the reasons why I even say, "Common sense isn't common!"  Therefore, if we take the evolution of people compared to the growth of technology, people have lived longer in relation to technology and yet lack perfection! Then, how can we expect technology to be perfect? 

This is the fundamental reason why we need leadership. Every time people rush to do something, it is the leadership from everyone that puts the checks and balances required in the processes to ensure the right thing is done. For every change, including but not limited to what artificial intelligence brings, it is not about whether you like that change or not, but it is about the rate at which we adopt it successfully. In a couple of sessions, there were experts referring to cases where the ChatGPT based solution was not successful because there was not a clear business case, and that leadership and AI governance were mandatory for AI to be successful ever. We talk about business case as a strategy document balancing the benefits with the risks and how the strategy aligns with the vision (that is from an "as is" state to the "to be" state). Such a business case is not made up of just plain technical experiments without a solid use case to support the business. 

Furthermore, the closing keynotes focused on how 'advanced technology' does not necessarily mean technical elements alone but require strategic considerations for legality and ethics. Embedded deeply in these thoughts is the need for the leadership (not just the people at the top but also the middle management such as product, project, account, program, portfolio, process, technology, HR, etc.) to partner, engage, collaborate and knowledge-share with multiple stakeholders garnering support for the strategy and vision in the business case. This may additionally involve how to crowdsource fund differentiating between investment and funding schedules while simultaneously managing the in-house talent for capacity, transition, and succession planning! I believe if people are not engaged to lead and manage their processes, technology alone will not yield a solution. And, if we don’t think this way, we are not managing risks effectively and efficiently. Don't wonder why quality suffers in this case!

These thoughts are much more than just focusing on Agile and DevOps thinking as part of AI based experiments baked into iterations and spikes. I firmly believe that the ways of working are integrating two big frameworks in today's digital transformation. This integration involves both the middle management frameworks (like portfolio, program, product, and project) with the software development lifecycle (SDLC). So, instead of getting mixed up with plan-driven, adaptive, and hybrid ways of working that is equally important to both these frameworks, we should focus on "Product Application Lifecycle Management" (PALM, in my mind) that brings the frameworks together using multi-artifact traceability and auditability.  As I always say, enterprise business agility is not shifting left and shifting right alone but it is also about shifting up and down. That is how value flows - both vertically and horizontally. 

As a part-time assistant teaching professor at Northeastern University, I can tell that not every graduate courses in digital marketing, informatics, project management, software engineering, and business schools even mandate a good understanding of leadership. In fact, sometimes, project management graduates can't articulate the requirements of a contract or the procurement guidelines. Having trained many professionals for certifications furthermore outside the teaching engagements, I feel that even these tenured working professionals or those holding Certified Scrum Master can't understand the ingredients of servant leadership. 

We are on the cusp of a major change just like Internet or Telephony made waves once changing the landscape of how we work. We have one more opportunity to write history in leading the AI wave on how we work or will work in future. At this juncture, paying attention only to the technological aspects alone or yielding to comfort zones of known technical tools alone is a sure prescription for failure. If we know the principles of leadership, then, we can develop the right AI based solutions ensuring digital ethical principles like beneficence, non-maleficence, justice and autonomy are protected further ensuring that we monitor the AI's ability to explain itself identifying model drifts and hallucinations. 

Let us join forces learning about leadership first and technology next. Share your thoughts. 

Influence of Linguistics on Project Leadership

There is a common saying that 80% of the project manager's job is communication. Frequently, many think that this communication is about working with a team and writing status reports. On the contrary, most of this communication is working with both project management stakeholders and project team members. I always say that people's non-verbal communication carries more meaning. With various remote ways of working, it is important how the verbal and non-verbal communication play together in the leading people as the concept of communication is centered on five critical elements - clarity, correctness, completeness, cohesiveness, and conciseness. 

Fortunately, I had my son who was studying linguistics in his college and sharing his thoughts on what he was learning. He mentioned to me that linguistics in a nutshell has five major elements which include phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. It was shocking to me how much language plays a pivotal role in leadership level communication and here are my connections on the influence of linguistics on project leadership. 

Phonology: This area focuses on the study of sounds implemented within a language. It differs from phonetics where abstract sounds that may or may not have any meaning associated. For instance, the letter "s" takes the sound of "z" while saying "cars". Particularly in verbal communication, this is very critical for people to understand each other as it lays the foundation for clarity. Especially when team members are from different culture or a technical communication channel is used with remote team members, clarity may be compromised, and it is important for one to actively listen to avoid the risk of assumptions of what one thought they heard. In project meetings, I often ask people to summarize what their actions items are before meeting again, and this helps me ensure that they heard me right.  

I normally say, "writing is for the eyes and speaking is for the ears." However, even with written reports, if project managers do not think through how the report will sound to others, then, they may risk misinterpretation. Therefore, taking the time to read out the reports aloud eliminates how the report may sound to someone. 

Morphology: This area focuses on the study of words within a sentence. The history of culture itself may influence how words are formed differentiating agglutinative, fusional, and polysynthetic structure. Now, just like morphology builds on phonology, I see correctness in project communication builds on clarity. When relying on bad news such as schedules delays, cost overruns, or resource challenges, the appropriate placement of words in the sentence may assuage fears. In other words, I feel that morphology addresses the "What's in it for me?" types of questions in both ,verbal and non-verbal communication.   

Syntax: This area focuses on the study of sentence formation with words and punctuation. Using an example of a syntax tree, the different parts of the sentence are constructed. I recalled how lexical analysis was integral in computer science in assemblers, interpreters, and finally compiler design in computer science. To me, this syntax builds on morphology for larger level decision-making. For instance, the connections of various elements in project charter, the strategic connections between project charter and the business case, and the connections between business requirements document and functional specifications document are all examples of syntax analysis required for "completeness" in communication through the multiple artifacts. 

Semantics: This area focuses on the study of meaning. Since meaning is interpreted by people, culture comes into play. This culture may not necessarily be limited to geographical cultures (e.g.: Hofstede Dimensions) but also role specific communication. For instance, the type of meaning people associated with words among various people. A business analyst sees "value" to be with customer whereas the same "value" relates to technical stability by a systems engineer. We can see how project delivery members mix up words such as "iteration" from Agile and "sprint" from Scrum. The semantics elements therefore play a critical role in push, pull, and interactive communications because of their use either for dissemination of information (broadcasting) or for alternative generation (brainstorming) for problem solving or decision-making, the concept of semantics brings "cohesiveness" in communication. So, semantics must be considered excessively by project managers to lead others.

Pragmatics: This area is the study of the social aspects of language semantics. All the essential above elements are codified in informal or formal language registers and take on additional focus especially with many areas such as the dialect, age groups, respect, etc. For instance, generational considerations may have to be incorporated in both verbal and non-verbal communication differentiated in informal and formal communication. When conflict resolutions come up, groupthink behaviors may have to be addressed in favor of smoothing and collaboration approaches. During all these interactions, pragmatics avoids unnecessary confusions by focusing on "conciseness."

Interesting to see how much the discipline of leadership is critical for project leadership! What do you see? 

Simple Definition of Leadership

Leadership - Much has been talked about it both in scholarly literature and professional circles. Job roles, such as the Team Leader, also requires one to take leadership of a team. Similarly, various functional roles and strategic business units advance the notion of leadership inherent in them. For instance, a product owner is expected to be a leader in understanding the strategic nature of the product although the role itself doesn't have any leader tag associated. Similarly, account manager to lead the client and project manager to lead the client, team, and performing organizations mandate leadership qualities in them - yet there is no tag "leader" associated.

In several training classes, such as PMP training and Agile training that I have done, classes that I have facilitated in the academic setting for adult learners, as well as in the corporate and professional circles that I associate with, the questions of whether one is a leader or not comes up! So, how can we define leadership in its simple form without attributing terms such as charismatic, transactional, situational, transformational, and servant definitions so that anyone regardless of any professional or personal role can relate to being a leader!

When I was traveling to Vietnam, I stopped by Hong Kong where I had to wait for the connecting flight. It is there that simple definition really clicked to me as I saw a picture of a flying character with the slogans written in Chinese. Now, I don't know what the transcription reads on that board but the definition of leadership as, "a superpower seeing the people beyond what they see themselves and supporting them to raise up to their capabilities!" came up in my mind.

Please see the video linked here to hear my thought! (If the hyperlink does not work, please visit https://youtu.be/YYE76ZQjEV0 ) Would you agree with this definition?  Share your thoughts.

Thanks.
Sriram

Lessons learned: What the Silver Screen Cinemas can tell us?

I have been an ardent advocator of teaching the basics of project management, leadership, and emotional intelligence throughout my training and teaching career. In one of the recent classes that I was fortunate to facilitate, I used the example of Apollo 13 motion picture (Grazer & Howard, 1995) to illustrate to the class about the practical realities of how risks and quality can severely turn the happy path scenarios around. It was a revelation for the class as the various teams related to the emphasis of the "unknown unknown" risks on the management reserves, the criticality of risk identification and management strategies on contingency planning, influence of leadership on the conflict resolution and negotiation, etc. Synthesized in this blog are the major lessons that evolved from the class. When used effectively, the use of movies can become an effective tool at both academic and practitioner settings.

One of the first lessons was the importance of the timely response to strategic changes in direction as management and leadership reestablished the priority. Not only did the NASA management disregard the original mission to land on the moon but quickly established the revised project goal as they reset the impossible expectations on the on-ground team to bring the astronauts back to earth! Even at a tactical level, when one of the engineers pointed out how much power they need to conserve to return to earth, the decision-making was quick. One may question the time taken here because all these discussions were captured in a movie. However, when relating to the Apollo 13 timeline (n.d.) that were documented by where the entire episode of the discovery of the problem to the egress of the astronauts from the command module was approximately only 2.5 days, the importance of decision making cannot be overlooked.

The recurring theme among the teams was the relationship of proactive risk management. A space shuttle launch initiative is a major undertaking and risk management is a sine qua non of such larger programs. Yet, when the calamity dawned on the team, it became apparent in the class discussions how many of the risk response strategies had to be reworked identifying the secondary risks of the release of unsafe chemical gases and attempts to squeeze more power from modules for which no clearly documented procedures existed.

Another theme resonated nicely from the discussions was the importance of stakeholder and communication management. As heard in the movie, “Failure was not an option,” for NASA but there were several stakeholders in the power-influence grid that needed to be managed. The team’s efforts in managing these numerous stakeholders’ expectations during this major recovery exercise were commendable particularly when the only available communication channels available at that time were the radio, the television, and the newspapers. Managing expectations of public relations was still achieved in the absence of today’s Internet-connected social media world.

An interesting point was the class focus rested predominantly on the on-ground team efforts until discussions were brought on the astronauts that needed to execute these sequences under entirely different situations of limited heat, extreme stress, limited resources, and intense focus. These facilitated discussions further highlighted the analogy to the gaps experienced with the distributed, virtual, and remote teams were brought to light.

In summarizing, this exercise brought a good closure in bringing home the vital elements of management and leadership while constantly managing the emotions expeditiously and relating to the basic principles of project management.

What other movies do you think can bring home similar experiences in a teaching or training setting?

References

Apollo 13 Timeline (n.d.). Retrieved November 30, 2016, from http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_13h_Timeline.htm

Grazer, B. (Producer), & Howard, R. (Director). (1995). Apollo 13 [Motion picture]. United States: Universal Pictures.