Why Your Team Must Use GENai, and You Shouldn’t

Using GENai can significantly enhance problem-solving activities for individuals within teams, highlighting why team use is beneficial, but what about you as a leader? 

Here's a breakdown of the advantages and considerations based on the BCG groundbreaking research on GENai use, How People Create and Destroy Value with Generative AI 

Why Your Team Must Use GENai

Assuming a team member is less experienced and knowledgeable in a functional area than you are, there is a huge opportunity for that individual to gain knowledge using GENai.  In fact the research suggests, using GENai can level the playing field, enabling less knowledgeable functional users to almost equal a more senior user's functional knowledge.

In the accounting and finance world, this means your team can now have your well earnt knowledge, instantly!

Possible advantages for teams

1. Enhanced Problem-Solving

Consistent Information: GENai provides a unified knowledge base, ensuring all team members have access to the same information for problem-solving.

Improved Critical Thinking: It facilitates better understanding across departments, reducing misunderstandings and enhancing collaborative problem-solving efforts.

Watch out! GENai’s convincing responses are NOT fact, can be misleading, and should always be validated by a human.

2. Efficiency and Productivity

Automated Analysis: GENai can automate the analysis of data, identifying patterns and potential solutions faster than manual methods.

Rapid Data Retrieval: It can quickly retrieve and process relevant information, speeding up the problem-solving process.

Advanced Analytics: GENai analyses large datasets to uncover trends and insights, providing a solid foundation for informed decision-making.

Predictive Insights: It offers predictive analytics to anticipate potential issues and proactively address them.

Watch out! GENai is not a system. If you require repeatable processes and outcomes, working on data management and data analytics tools is best.

So, if team members can use GENai to equal your senior functional knowledge, where does this leave you?  

Why You Shouldn’t Use GENai as a Functional leader.

Possible considerations for leaders

We need to tread carefully when embracing GENai as a leader. Not because it isn’t valuable to your team, but because of the impact on you as a leader.

Choosing how to use GENai as an individual, and with your team, is a critical decision all leaders should take, one way or another.

In the accounting and finance world, this means you avoid certain activities, and work on business value, rather than technology!

1. Over-Reliance Risk:

Critical Thinking: Relying too heavily on GENai for leadership tasks can diminish your problem-solving skills and critical thinking abilities. 

Knowledge Atrophy: Continuous personal use might lead to a decline in your ability to solve problems independently.

Watch out! As GENai can level up your team’s knowledge and critical thinking, your focus must be on the business questions and relationships, not the technology alone.

2. Bias and Accuracy

Unchecked Bias: Individual use without oversight can result in decisions based on biased or inaccurate data.

Verification: Teams can implement checks and balances to verify GENai’s outputs, which is harder to do effectively on an individual basis.

Watch out! As GENai can present misleading yet convincing responses, it is important to spend time as a validator of output and decision, rather than a user.

So, what should I be doing?

If you believe GENai is good for your team, support it, get them using it, and accept they will accelerate skills and knowledge as a result, closing the functional knowledge gap, much more quickly than you did.

Support use of GENai, over training of GENai, as training appears to have a detrimental impact on the learning journey. Maybe giving people overconfidence in their own skills, using prompts, and killing intuition in the process.

And your role?

Use your functional knowledge and experience to find the right questions that need answering, by working with the business, not GENai.  

Avoid using GENai for lazy questions, and use your time to validate other GENai output.  Focus on answering better business questions, in collaboration with your team of GENai users, rather than as a user.

Ultimately, the aim is to use resources effectively, and collaborating on GENai use with your team, and better business questions with your business, will lead to better outcomes and performance acceleration.

Conclusion

GENai is a powerful tool that can significantly enhance problem-solving activities within teams through improved coordination, efficiency, data-driven decisions, and critical thinking.

However, leaders carry the risks of over-reliance, knowledge atrophy and biases. 

Therefore, GENai is best utilised in a structured way across your team to maximise benefits.

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