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Stephanie Otto is the Global Director of Strategy and Innovation for Cask NX.
Generative AI (GenAI) is changing behaviors, upending industries, and reshaping our world faster than any innovation in history. It’s redefining the very fabric of how businesses operate, innovate, and compete. For business leaders, this is a rare and once-in-a-career opportunity to drive meaningful change and secure a lasting competitive edge. But only 48 percent of digital initiatives meet or exceed business outcome targets, underscoring the urgent need for a more strategic approach. Here’s what you need to know to make sure you’re successful in this new technological era.
Early Adopters Set the Pace, Competitors Follow
As the generative AI era accelerates—or “the intelligent age,” as many are calling it—businesses face unprecedented opportunities to revolutionize efficiency, productivity, and innovation. However, with this rapid transformation comes significant challenges, uncertainty and risk, including workforce disruption and the need to integrate AI seamlessly into existing operations. Navigating these complexities requires decisive leadership and a willingness to take bold, calculated steps now to amplify results tomorrow.
Having been responsible for many “firsts” during the transition to digital, I know that leaders who fail to take action fall behind to early adopters—and it’s more difficult than ever for organizations to claw their way back. Being an early adopter not only positions your company as innovative, but also creates a critical advantage in building customer trust and attracting top talent. Early movers often establish benchmarks, shape industry trends, and set the pace for competitors to follow.
Every leader and business has a different aptitude for how quickly they can embrace change. Being early to GenAI doesn’t have to mean making big, irreversible swings or putting all your eggs in one basket—even a single small step can help organizations start to gain traction, showcase results, and then build on those successes. You will soon see the transformative impact AI has on your organization and uncover even greater opportunities to adopt and integrate it strategically, paving the way for sustainable and scalable success.
Steps to Succeed with GenAI
Leaders can take a number of incremental but impactful steps to integrate AI into their operations. Here are a few that I recommend:
- Run a Pilot with a Specific Target Audience: Focus on incremental improvements to the efficiency and employee experience of developers or agents through small scale use of GenAI with clearly defined goals.
- Focus on Data Foundations to Optimize Internal Processes: One of the first steps in preparing for GenAI-enabled change is to ensure your data quality and accuracy is solid and will support your ability to optimize workflows in critical areas like IT Service Management, HR, or Finance, reducing manual efforts, and improving accuracy.
- Don’t Lose Sight of Holistic Business Transformation: While GenAI is top of mind for executives, continue to focus on the bigger picture of end-to-end business transformation, operations, and continual improvement. This includes leveraging GenAI alongside other more traditional solutions to automate manual processes, consolidate legacy applications, and ensure your data is clean, structured, and accessible.
Follow Up to Drive Change
As a leader, your role extends beyond championing AI—it’s about crafting and communicating a compelling vision that inspires your teams and aligns seamlessly with your strategic priorities. Understand the outcomes you’re trying to achieve and build a sequential roadmap that’s tied to those outcomes.
Ensure each step you take is measurable, scalable, and aligned with your broader business objectives. Most importantly, the goal should be to leverage AI to solve your specific business challenges, versus just implementing AI for AI’s sake.
It’s also imperative to foster alignment by engaging cross-functional teams early, establish clear ownership of AI initiatives, and celebrate small wins to build momentum and trust. This means articulating the “why” behind AI adoption, demonstrating its potential impact, and ensuring that your people are prepared and excited to execute on this shared vision.
In order to drive sustainable change in your organization, you need to have the right talent to lead your ongoing transformation. Make sure to put people first. Connect them to the vision and make sure they have the knowledge and skills to not only execute on it, but embrace it and be excited about it. You have to bring people along, and it has to come from the top down. Communication is more important than ever with this level of technology change.
Bottom Line: Think of Technology as Strategy, not Infrastructure
Studies reveal that nearly 70 percent of organizations’ digital transformations fail, often because companies approach them as technical upgrades rather than strategic reinventions. With GenAI, companies now have the opportunity to completely rethink how they serve their customers, their employees, and their business.
Generative AI is not a fleeting trend. It’s a transformative force revolutionizing industries and redefining the future of businesses. I am seeing companies move from experimentation to implementation, and in the next two years that change will be exponential. This is not a time where leaders can afford to be hesitant or just wait around to see how things play out. The time to act is now. Leaders who act decisively and embrace this moment with clarity, courage, and purpose won’t just navigate this wave of change—they’ll drive it. Start small, think big, and lead boldly to define the future in the generative AI era.
Explore our list of the top companies defining AI and creating new applications for this dynamic technology across industries.
