哈佛商业评论

FEATURES

TECHNOLOGY

BUILDING THE AI- POWERED ORGANIZATION

TimFountaine, Brian McCarthy, and Tamim Saleh | page 066

Artificialintelligence seems to be on the brink of a boom. It’s nowguiding decisions on everything from crop harvests to bank loans, and uses liketotally automated customer service

are on the horizon. Indeed, McKinsey estimates that AI will add $13trillion to the global economy in the next decade. Yet companies are strugglingto scale up their AI efforts. Most have run only

ad hoc projectsor applied AI in just a single business process.

In surveysof thousands of executives and work with hundreds of clients, McKinsey hasidentified how firms can capture the full AI opportunity. The key

is to understand the organizational and cultural barriers AI initiativesface and work to lower them. That means shifting workers away from traditionalmindsets, like relying on top-down decision making, which often run counter tothose needed for AI. Leaders can also set up AI projects for success byconveying their urgency and benefits; investing heavily in AI education andadoption; and accounting for the company’s AI maturity, business complexity,and innovation pace when deciding how work should be organized.

HBR Reprint R1904C

FEATURES

MANAGING PEOPLE

WHEN A COLLEAGUE IS GRIEVING

GianpieroPetriglieri and Sally Maitlis | page 088

Grief is auniversal human experience, yet workplace culture is often inhospitable topeople suffering profound loss. Managers come to work prepared to celebrate birthsand birthdays, and even to handle illnesses, but when it comes to death, theyfall silent and avert their gaze. The default approach is to try to spare theoffice from grief, leaving bereaved employees alone for a few days and thenhoping they’llreturn expediently to work.

This articleprovides guidance on how to humanely help team members return to productivity.Grief rarely unfolds in a neat progression, and managers should understand thephases the bereaved will experience and the most helpful response to each.Immediately after a death, acknowledging the loss without making demands is thebest a manager can do. After grieving employees are back on the job, managersshould

be patient with inconsistency in performance and attitude. And asworkers eventually emerge from mourning, managers should support thisopportunity for growth.

Inconfronting grief, managers help fulfill their promise to bring out the best intheir employees.

HBR Reprint R1904H

FEATURES

STRATEGY

DIGITALDOESNʼT HAVE TO BE DISRUPTIVE

Nathan Furrand Andrew Shipilov page 096

Managersstruggle to understand what digital transformation actually means for them interms of which opportunities to pursue and which initiatives to prioritize.

It’s notsurprising that many of them expect it to involve a radical disruption of thebusiness, huge new investments in technology, a complete switch from physicalto virtual channels, and the acquisition of tech start-ups.

To be sure,in some cases such a paradigm shift is involved. But the authors’ research andwork suggest that wholesale disruption is often quite unnecessary. Somecompanies have successfully responded to the digital challenge by making majorchanges

to theirmanufacturing processes, distribution channels, or business models, but manyothers have fared equally well using a more incremental approach that leavesthe core value proposition and supply chain essentially unchanged.

HBR Reprint R1904F