Tech vs Culture: What will bring the most benefits in the future?

I had an incredibly interesting guest on the podcast last week, Dom Thurbon. 

He will be speaking at Elite Retreat this year, with two sessions planned.

One will focus on disruptive thinking, while the other will be an actionable session that brings everything together.

Of course, disruptive thinking is needed to navigate this new era of AI - and this term I’ve been hearing a lot lately: ‘General Purpose Technology’. 

I find it a weird coincidence - or was it planned - that it has the same acronym as Generative Pre-trained Transformer (which is what the GPT in ChatGPT stands for).

Anyway.

General-purpose Technology is defined as something that has the potential to transform various sectors and industries right across the economy, as electricity and the Internet have done in the past.

This means AI (across the board) is expected to:

1. Improve productivity and efficiency

2. Create new job roles and industries

3. Disrupt existing business models

4. Accelerate innovation and research

5. Enhance decision-making processes

6. Personalise user experiences

7. Automate complex tasks

8. Augment human capabilities

9. … and the list goes on (nothing new to you guys here, right?)

So, I asked Dom what he thought some of the big challenges for businesses in this era would be, and the answer was pretty interesting and, let me say, super relevant to everyone in real estate.

Dom noted that a recent McKinsey survey examined the characteristics of the world's most innovative companies, with a special section on AI.

It asked a simple question: What are the companies getting the most value from AI doing? How are they doing it?

Here’s what Dom said (in case you haven’t listened to the podcast or the snippet above)

“Their findings were remarkable.

“When looking at the top quartile of companies getting the most value from AI investments, they were only spending about a third of their AI-related budget on technology (algorithms, tools, platforms).

“They were spending twice that much on people and change aspects related to extracting value from AI.

“While AI is technologically an engineering challenge, unlocking its value is a people challenge.

“It's a behaviour change challenge: It always requires stopping one way of doing things and starting another.

“For example:

• You have to stop creating your web adverts one way and start creating them another way.

• You need to stop approaching tasks one way and start approaching them differently.

• You need to stop framing your options one way and start framing them another way.

“It is, fundamentally, a behaviour change problem.”

The real estate industry seems to be starting to embrace AI as a significant productivity enhancer, and many people are playing with the technology.

It’s still very early days and that is a great start.

But how well are we as an industry managing the behaviour change in our businesses, including some of the examples noted above?

My observation over the last 15 years or so - and I say this with much love and respect - is as an industry we are not great at behaviour change.

We were good at it during the pandemic, but as soon as we were able many players went back (with much relief) to doing things the way they have always done them.

So, we can tinker around the edges, creating the odd listing description or social media post with AI, but really, where is the plan to transform our existing business processes that will make the real difference?

This topic has been on my mind a fair bit lately, and one of the reasons I’ve been a bit quiet lately on this blog is that I have been busy putting together an AI implementation Action Guide - or Roadmap if you will.

I figured we all needed something that was step-by-step simple in the what, why and how.

If you decide to give it a download, you’ll find this Action guide covers some of the really meaty stuff, such as how to understand and mitigate some of the potential risks - but also some of the aspects that will promote a culture of continuous improvement in order to realise those benefits McKinsey talked about.

Let me know what you think.

Happy Hunting 🚀

PS If you still have a boss who’s hesitating on the costs vs benefits of AI it is a great tool to point them to. Or… if you are trying to justify the cost of a paid subscription to ChatGPT it might just get you over the line!