Klarna is one example of a company that has leaned heavily into AI and reaped the benefits
A yawning chasm is emerging in boardrooms across the corporate world. As AI-native workforces integrate the technology into their day-to-day lives, CEOs are faced with a choice: do they actively encourage, facilitate, and train this use, or do they continue on, business as usual, leaving their staff to take responsibility for their own AI skills.
Klarna’s recent financial results have put to bed any notion that the latter strategy is a viable path to success in the AI era. The Swedish buy-now-pay-later giant has leaned heavily into AI, with CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski actively encouraging its use throughout the company (Verdict).
And recently, the dividends of this strategy were made clear – with 90% of staff actively using AI daily, fintech posted a 16% drop in marketing costs, as well as a similar fall in customer service costs by 14% (The Information). These AI-powered savings have powered the startup's growth ahead of its hotly anticipated US IPO (Financial Times).
To CEOs around the world, this should be a clear shot across the bow – if you’re not actively encouraging and training your staff to use AI, you’re already falling behind.
Too many have been lulled into security, thinking that as long as they aren’t a dinosaur who consciously bans AI in the workplace, then they are up to speed. However, this business-as-usual mindset will still sink their companies – it will just be a slow leak rather than a catastrophic flood.
CEOs, who haven’t already, need to get on the front foot – and start rolling out comprehensive AI training programs and workshops that encourage and train their staff to utilize AI throughout their organization.
This can’t be just a one-off ad hoc day where staff are taught what AI is before never following up again for another year – these need to be robust, regular training sessions involving the whole organization, right up from the shop floor to the CEO.
The first stage of these training courses needs to educate staff on the plethora of AI tools available to them. As helpful as it is, using ChatGPT for specific knowledge requests is hardly leveraging AI to its fullest potential. For every specific task, whether it’s data analysis, meeting notes, or software engineering, there’s an AI tool available – employees just need to know where to find them.
The next stage will be training staff on how to actually use these tools more effectively. AI isn’t omniscient – simply expecting ChatGPT to spit out the correct answer every time will not produce results. Employees need to understand the art of prompting, refining and reiterating each query in order to best optimize the AI tool they’re using.
The final part of robust AI training will be for CEOs to spearhead a culture of experimentation and feedback long after the actual training sessions finish. If staff are encouraged to independently innovate with AI, and to then report back to their CEOs with findings about which processes can be improved and built on, then the organisation as a whole will greatly benefit. And CEOs who establish formal mechanisms for this will quickly see the results in their company’s performance.
CEOs can’t afford to just sit back and let their staff pick up the slack when it comes to AI training. They need to be on the front foot, actively driving these changes, banging the drum for AI, and coaching their staff on how to use it to drive results. Klarna’s bumper round of results highlights how the difference between CEOs who do and do not will soon be stark.
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