How to Decide If Your Company Needs a CAIO to Help Drive Growth

• The chief AI officer is a developing C-suite position that leads a company’s AI strategy.
• Accenture’s CAIO says a key requirement for the role is knowing how to drive growth with tech.
• This article is part of “CXO AI Playbook” — straight talk from business leaders on how they’re testing and using AI.

As the chief artificial intelligence officer at Accenture, a global professional-services firm, Lan Guan says she approaches her role from “both an outside-in and inside-out lens.”

The latter means leading conversations with the company’s clients about how they can get started with artificial intelligence and how the technology can drive growth for them.

Guan told Business Insider she gets excited talking to clients about the potential of AI. “I believe this is a technology for everyone,” she said. “But 90% of the clients out there are still grappling with this technology.”

Internally, Guan said she’s helping Accenture’s workforce develop AI skills and attract talent that is already well-versed in the technology.

Accenture created the CAIO role in September to further its mission to put “AI at the center of our strategy,” Guan said. “It’s a very exciting role, and it’s also a highly challenging one. I like both aspects.”

With more organizations embracing AI, we talked to Guan about how executives can decide whether they need a CAIO and how to support the role.

The following has been edited for clarity and length.

What does a CAIO role typically involve?

First and foremost, this is the C-suite leader driving the overall AI strategy for a particular company. It’s important for any organization to have one single leader, with collaborations with other technology leaders, to bring together a companywide strategy.

How does this company use different kinds of AI as a foundation to drive growth, to create a personalized customer experience, and to drive efficiency across different business functions?

The role will also shape your talent road map. With AI, the impact on your workforce across the board is going to be enormous.

Another aspect is responsible AI governance — making sure there’s a standard within the company for evaluation of the technology benchmarks. It’s driving compliance, governance, and standardization.

How can company leaders decide whether they need a CAIO?

I get this question a lot. I believe this is something a lot of CEOs and board members are contemplating. Having a CAIO is probably not for everyone now, but probably everybody will get there.

I believe that you should not always base your decisions on intuition. You want to have an evidence-based approach to back up your decisions so that you understand the risks around your decision-making. How will the company use AI to drive growth?

There’s no textbook answer. It’s looking at all of those characteristics. And you need to pick the right leader.

What characteristics should corporate leaders look for in a CAIO?

This leader has to have a multidisciplinary skillset. Technology chops is a given.

But you can’t just be the super-geeky technologist. You need to understand all the disciplines of AI, ranging from data to diagnostic AI to machine learning, deep learning, and things further down the road.

They also need to be an inspirational leader. We’re working in a highly disruptive space. The person needs to be a people leader, very good at growing talent, being an influencer, and shaping the narrative.

Collaboration is also important. This is not a role that’s sitting in a dark room and operating in silos. They have to be highly collaborative with everybody in the C-suite.

It’s a combination of strategy, technology, and people-change-management kind of role.

How can company leaders set their CAIO up for success?

Create a cultivating, nurturing environment because this is a new role. Allow this leader to get their feet wet. If a manufacturing company hires a CAIO, it’s important for them to visit all the plants and talk to the people working there to get firsthand experience.

The second part is having an innovation culture. I’m finding a lot of companies are still trying to figure out what that means. Because this role is new, we probably will be breaking things up. Having that innovation mindset allows this leader to have more wiggle room to try new things and bring in new technology.