Among the many angles surrounding the AI discussion these days, one that’s seldom discussed is how the technology is integrated into established organizations. We’re not talking about product integrations – though that’s closely related – but rather AI’s assimilation into company culture. Our go-to HR expert Jean Parchewsky has something to say about this. As VP of people operations at Vendasta, she’s had a hand at steering the company’s cultural embrace of AI, among other things. You may remember we recently broke down her insights around linking people strategy to product success.
As a quick point of background, Parchewsky’s advice carries weight and validity, given that Vendasta was recently named one of Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures™ by Waterstone Human Capital. So it’s a question of how the company’s people strategy led to this accolade, and where are transferable lessons?
Back to AI, Parchewsky says that the technology’s healthy embrace at Vendasta was seeded long before the technology itself came along. By engineering a culture of flexibility and openness to new things, AI has experienced a soft landing at Vendasta, which can’t always be said by established companies.
“We’ve been able to really drive AI throughout the organization fast,” Parchewsky told us. “And that’s attributed to our culture. The companies that are really winning with AI, and using it day-to-day, have a bias for action. Their people are really comfortable with change, and they’re innovative.”
Cultural Cornerstone
Of course, all the above is easier said than done. Simply saying “embrace AI,” doesn’t work in a top-down sense – especially for a technology that has so much baggage in terms of the fear it evokes around job security. So doing it right requires more deliberate and preemptive bottom-up cultural engineering.
But how is that done? The place Parchewsky points to as the most influential in nurturing culture is recruiting and hiring. Because an organization is its people, putting ample thought into each hire is critical for sustaining a given culture. And that – several steps prior to AI – is where AI adoption starts.
In this case, one of the things baked into Vendasta’s culture is flexibility and openness to new ideas and processes. And that cultural cornerstone is maintained by rigorous alignment with new hires. It’s all about being slow and deliberate. “Don’t go to the grocery store hungry, she says. “Hire slow, fire fast.”
Another cultural cornerstone that engenders openness and adoption is leeway for learning and making mistakes. This preempts a big adoption barrier for any emerging tech: fear of learning it, or appearing inferior for not excelling with it initially. A culture of learning lowers that barrier to a degree.
“People want to learn. They’re not afraid to learn,” said Parchewsky. “Obviously, there’s some hesitancy…. It’s hard to learn new things. But in our culture, we hire people like that. They know that they don’t have to get it right the first time.”
Vendasta Pioneers the Automate It-For-Me Approach to SMB SaaS
M-Shaped Worker
Another way to encourage AI’s cultural embrace, says Parchewsky, is to align it with people’s self-interest. Yes, AI is often linked to job security fears, but it can also bring positive connotations for job performance, skills development, and career building. It can do that by making people more versatile.
For example, Perchewsky says that the historical model is to groom T-shaped people in any given organization. They have a few skills that are well established, and that defines them. They may be a front-end developer or a back-end developer, or one that’s proficient in a given language like JavaScript.
But AI can create organizations that thrive around M-shaped workers. These are more flexible and fluid in terms of job skills. They have a baseline of knowledge, such as basic programming in the above examples, which can then be dynamically applied in different directions with the help of AI tools.
Altogether, this framework is something that most people in an organization can get behind, as it empowers them with skills, leverage, and flexibility. And from that, organizations can flip the script in terms of AI’s connotations: It’s not something people are afraid of, but something that propels them.
“Instead of being a front-end developer and backend, you can just be a developer,” said Perchewsky. “Or instead of being a blog writer, you’re just a content writer. So when one person leaves or if you have churn, you don’t necessarily have to fill that box. You have a group of content writers who can all do different roles. They have all these areas of expertise because of what they can do with AI.”
Hear more from Vendasta’s Jean Perchewsky at Localogy’s L26, April 21-22 in Houston, TX.
