As AI and emerging technologies continue to evolve the world of work, cultivating specific mindsets will be key to success. Understanding your unique mindsets—and those of your workforce— can help you accelerate the adoption of AI tools, stay open to growth, and sustain new AI-enabled ways of working.
Engaging your workforce is key to AI success
Accelerating the adoption of AI is a top priority for business leaders. PwC’s 2023 Global Investor Survey shows 61% of investors believe faster adoption is very or extremely important. Yet, 22% of workers believe that AI will not impact their job at all in the next five years, with many feeling uncertain or indifferent towards its transformative potential.
Successful value creation with AI requires more than learning how to use the technology. It requires a shift in employee attitudes and ways of thinking, where employees replace fear with curiosity, readily experimenting, collaborating, and getting comfortable with ambiguity. Organisations need to understand both the role impact and the mindset shift required to help employees transition from experimental AI pilots to truly integrating AI tools into their flow of work.
Embracing AI-enabled ways of work requires a mindset shift
A supportive AI-enabled culture requires cultivation of specific mindsets in your people, so that they are receptive and adaptive to the changes AI brings. Our team of behavioural scientists and qualitative researchers recently conducted a global AI Mindset workforce study across 7,000 employees. We found that employees with a more positive attitude towards AI are more comfortable using AI tools at work and are more likely to use AI tools.
To help your workforce better understand their mindset strengths and how they can get the most value out of AI in their role, we have developed an AI mindset self-assessment. It looks at five key mindsets found to help employees better embrace and adopt AI tools in the workplace.
Openness to new ideas
A future-positive mindset refers to having an optimistic attitude towards the future world of work and seeing beyond immediate challenges to focus on long-term benefits. Individuals who score highly on future-positive mindset are thinking like AI Enthusiasts, and are likely to:
- Have a hopeful vision for AI in the future
- Look for opportunities where AI can generate value
- See the potential in new ideas
Openness to experimentation
An agile mindset is a set of attitudes that support an agile way of working; that is, focused on steadily delivering value via improvement cycles, design-thinking, and adapting to change. Individuals who score highly on agile mindset are thinking like AI Experimenters, and are likely to:
- Be open to experimenting with AI tools
- Come up with new ways to use AI tools to efficiently complete tasks
- Continuously seek new insights to iterate their solutions
Openness to collaboration
A collective mindset helps promote a sense of shared responsibility and encourages individuals to solve problems together, fostering interdependence and collaboration. Individuals who score highly on collective mindset are thinking like AI Collaborators, and are likely to:
- Consider the collective impact of AI across their organisation and society
- Build a collective understanding of processes to better leverage AI tools
- Actively include diverse perspectives in their decision-making
Openness to change
Being comfortable with ambiguity is about being flexible to accept the ambiguity in situations, decision-making, and in outcomes, while also remaining calm in the face of risk and uncertainty. Individuals who score highly on comfort with ambiguity are thinking like AI Explorers, and are likely to:
- Pursue opportunities to expand their knowledge in AI
- Learn outside their comfort zone
- Embrace the ambiguity of AI and the change it brings
Openness to self-development
A growth mindset is the belief that your skills and talent can be developed through practice, feedback and effort. Individuals who score highly on growth mindset are likely to have an empowered attitude towards continuous learning and:
- Are willing to try using unfamiliar tools
- See mistakes as a chance to learn and grow
- Persevere through challenges
A data-led, strengths-based approach to AI transformation
Considering your workforce attitudes and obstacles to AI tool use, and addressing them from the start, will make or break the success of your adoption initiatives. Our AI Mindset organisational dashboard will help you better understand your workforce’s perception of AI, providing a snapshot of AI sentiment, obstacles and tool use, across your teams and territories, helping you better personalise adoption interventions.
As businesses become more AI-enabled, leaders have an opportunity to drive the conversation, and help employees adapt to an AI era. By understanding your workforce’s unique mindsets, behaviours and challenges, you can promote a culture of experimentation, innovation, self-development and collaboration to sustain AI-enabled ways of working and build greater workforce trust in your organisation's AI strategy.
