Leveraging AI to Build Cross-Functional Bridges In Your Organisation

Building Bridges: The AI Literacy Opportunity 

Imagine your organisation as my hometown, Stockholm, a city built on islands (an inner city built on roughly a dozen islands, with an archipelago of more than 30 000 islands). Now, picture the bridges, the ferries, and tunnels connecting these islands, turning it into a well-functioning city. That's the opportunity we have right now. A chance to connect teams together across departments and functions, finding common ground and smarter ways to work. 

I'm talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI). You might be experiencing AI fatigue, but hear me out. If you haven't offered your employees a chance to learn the basics of AI, you're in for a treat. Before mandatory regulations force you to provide AI literacy at the workplace (such as the EU AI Act, article 4), consider what you can offer your employees already. 

At Sveriges Radio (the Swedish Public Radio), our Learning & Development department took on this challenge.  

We realised this effort would need input from various areas within the company. And that's when it hit us—what an opportunity to impact learning culture and cross-functional cooperation! How often do we get to speak to the whole company about something playful, serious, theoretical, practical, and relevant? 

The Power of Cross-Functional Learning 

Here's the thing about AI: if we don't speak to each other across functions and departments, we'll never be able to launch AI on any level other than an individual one (i.e. each person using AI best they see fit, but nothing for the organisation as a whole). Basically, we'd end up with disconnected islands of AI knowledge, or lack thereof, with no means of transportation between them. But in order to build these bridges, we would have to bring everyone’s knowledge to at least the basics. 

We could, of course, try to buy a course from an external source, but we didn’t feel like anyone offered exactly what we needed: something tailored to our organisation. Instead, we saw an opportunity to exemplify some of the values championed in a learning culture, such as: 

1. Collaborative environment: Encouraging teamwork and cross-functional collaboration to share diverse perspectives on AI.
2. Knowledge sharing: Promoting peer learning by allowing colleagues to share real-world examples and engaging in a forum for AI learning.
3. Lifelong learning: Fostering continuous learning as the potential applications of AI are limited only by imagination, and the technology continues to evolve rapidly. 

We created our own course in the Basics of AI from scratch, using the skills and talents within our company. We wanted our colleagues to become aware of risks while daring to try their hands at the technology. 

Behavioural research shows that traditional methods focusing only on theory have an effect size of 0.04, while learning combined with practical applications has an effect size of 3.70. The difference is staggering (Albarracin et al., qtd. in Hardman). We wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes many made with the European GDPR courses: mandatory, boring click-throughs that create a bad rep for learning departments. We wanted our colleagues to not just understand AI, but to actually use it effectively and responsibly so they can become involved in shaping the future of AI within the organisation. 

Our Approach: A Step-by-Step Guide 

Here's how we tackled this challenge: 

1. Set up a structure for AI with backing from management.
2. Define your 'why' and 'what' with a cross-functional team. Do not get stuck in the 'how' quite yet.
3. Prioritise needs with your AI experts.
4. If one of your priorities proves to be to offer basic AI literacy for all, build a diverse team to create content for your first AI learning initiative.
5. Test your initiative with a focus group and communicate it widely before its launch (to all managers within the organisation and all your other employees. We had the luxury of having our CEO communicate our 'why' widely to everyone). At this point, you need to have policies and guidelines in place.
6. Launch with a bang – we did it on a company-wide 'learning day' event.
7. Watch as AI begins building bridges across the organisation.

We kept the course short – just four modules totalling 40-90 minutes (i.e., each module would take an estimated 10-15 minutes). This addressed concerns about time management and workload. We focused on practical applications, keeping the language simple and digestible. For the design, we used simple tools (that anyone could use) and visualised concepts early to engage our experts effectively. 

Key Learnings and Insights 

Through this process integrating AI, we gained valuable insights: 

1. Have co-creators/subject matter experts set aside time for content creation in their calendars.
2. Ensure you have digitally competent people on your team.
3. Include IT/developers, —they're key to connecting with operations, and they also need to find the course interesting (if not in technical ways, then in other ways, such as learning more about operations through scenarios around the use of AI).
4. Use this as an opportunity to launch communities and cross-functional understanding.
5. Consider turning some content into videos for better engagement and support different learning styles.
6. Doing it in-house can save significant costs—it did for us!
7. Gather data—free text answers are gold in the age of AI!

By involving people from different departments, we not only created a more comprehensive course but also started building crucial bridges between our organisational silos. The process itself became a learning experience in cross-functional collaboration. 

Also, do not undervalue the value in free text answers. We live in the age of AI, and those traditional scales 1-5/1-7/1-10-questions were meant for a time when analysing data was difficult. That’s not to suggest you overwhelm your users with free text answers, but just one question can provide immense data for future use. We posed the following question: “What would you like an assistant/researcher/mentor/coach to help you out with at work?” 

The Results and the Future: Beyond AI Literacy 

The results were impressive. Half of our roughly 2 000 employees completed the course within less than two months of launch. That means we now had—more than a 1 000 employees who have learned the basics of AI. We also have more than 1 000 suggestions on what they would need AI to do for them. This data can easily be analysed in the current age, and one of our AI developers has already begun the work. 

AI is nothing without data. In a future that is fluent in AI, nothing will be possible without employees working together across functions, roles, and departments. They are key in creating and understanding the data that will drive the future, but they will have to work together to make it happen. 

As a bonus, cross-functional teams tend to feel much more motivated. One study found that a significant majority of members in such teams reported feeling motivated (Jansson and Persson 71). This not only impacts employee satisfaction and retention, but also has broader benefits. A company that values collaboration across functions becomes more attractive to potential employees and reveals hidden talents within the organisation. 

So, why not start using AI literacy as that perfect excuse to get started within your organisation? Allow for those islands of knowledge to get connected. Remember, this isn't a one-time effort—it's the beginning of a journey. A journey towards a more connected, collaborative, and innovative organisation. Are you ready to start building your bridges?