Work / Case study / Thought leadership / 2017

Giving a 200,000-person company shared language for AI

Lead author of an enterprise automation white paper and the Data Powered series. Convene the experts, converge the viewpoints, author the synthesis, ship a framework people actually use.

Role: Lead author. Spearheaded and aligned multidisciplinary contributors, engineers and senior leaders, to produce shared, authoritative artifacts, applying human-factors methods to get everyone on the same page without labeling the method as such.
Context: Chief Data Office of a Fortune 10 telecom.
Engagement types: Expert consult, Board or advisor, Workshops and speaking
Date: 2017 and following

The problem

A large enterprise pushing into AI, automation, and data-driven decision-making lacked shared language and frameworks for it. Many smart people held pieces of the picture across different teams, but there was no authoritative, common reference to align strategy and investment.

The approach

Convene the right experts, align them, and synthesize the result into authoritative thought leadership. Across multiple papers, including an enterprise automation white paper and the Data Powered series, the method was consistent.

Bring engineers and leaders together and surface what each actually knew.
Use human-factors and facilitation techniques to converge many viewpoints into one coherent narrative.
Author and structure the synthesis, including durable frameworks such as a five-milestone automation maturity model.

On the automation white paper, a senior leader was listed first for internal-political reasons, understood by everyone involved. The lead authorship and synthesis were mine.

The outcome

Published internal thought leadership that gave the organization shared language and frameworks for AI and automation, used to align strategy and orient teams. The work established a common reference point rather than another siloed opinion.

What it demonstrates

Lead authorship of enterprise AI and automation thought leadership.
Orchestrating multidisciplinary experts to a shared, authoritative artifact.
Human-factors-driven facilitation and synthesis applied to strategy, not just interfaces.

Describes authorship and method. Proprietary internal detail not reproduced. The papers themselves are not published here.