Sagraves Featured by ServiceNow on AI Leadership

As companies ramp up AI investment and initiatives, they’re struggling with structures and oversight. Allison Sagraves was included in a roundtable discussion on AI Leadership by ServiceNow, a company that runs a cloud-based workflow automation platform.

In her remarks, Sagraves said that “everybody needs to take ownership of AI leadership.” She continued by saying:

Since more than 80% of companies have chief data officers today, many companies are expanding that role into “chief data and AI officer,” tacking AI leadership onto an already busy job. I think that’s a flawed approach. It’s a simplistic notion that we’re going to find the right C-suite role and say, “That’s the leader.” But that’s missing out on a rich opportunity. We’re at a moment of true democratization. Everybody needs to take ownership of AI.

This is less about a particular skill and more about a mindset to be able to think of your business context and how your business can benefit from the new capabilities that are emerging every day in the world. You need people from multiple perspectives, and you need to pull them together into a team to determine an AI strategy and infuse it throughout the organization. 

AI is a business opportunity. Rather than looking exclusively to a technologist for solutions, I would ask, “Who are high-performing people across the spectrum who understand business and understand change?” You need people who are interdisciplinary, execution-focused problem solvers with the skills and mindset to use AI to solve business challenges, not simply to apply the technology because it’s there. 

A CDO or CDAIO might make sense to coach a cross-functional team, because what is the raw material for AI? Of course, it’s data. But we need to evolve the idea of leadership as a collective instead of leadership as an individual.