Setting Up Your AI & Automation CoE (Guest: Chris Johannessen)

Andreas Welsch: 0:21

Today we'll talk about setting up your center of excellence and who better to talk about it than someone who's really passionate about it and who's been doing that for a good part of their career. Chris Johannessen. Hey, Chris. Thanks for joining.

Chris Johannessen: 0:37

Hey, thank you, Andreas. It's it's great to be here and to share a few things in 15 minutes or less with the audience today.

Andreas Welsch: 0:45

That's awesome. Hey, why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself, who you are and what you do.

Chris Johannessen: 0:50

Sure. Chris Johannesson. I've been doing work with CoEs, knowledge management, digital and technology and analytics and data transformation for well over 20 years now, I'm not afraid to say, you can see by the little bit of gray hair on top of my head here. I've had the opportunity to get up to speed and learn this in the early days of my career with. A nice run at General Electric where I was facilitator of knowledge management. I even had a co o e for how to do CoEs within ge, except we call them communities of practice. And back in the day. And then along the way, someone decided that the word excellence sounded better than practice and a little bit more exciting. And I think I would agree. And then from then I've had other different stops in my career journey building marketing CoEs with clients and internal organizations such as eBay Enterprise and some others. And then onwards into the world of management consultancy where I've had some stints with organizations such as McKinsey See a partners global Consultancies and Access group most recently, which is more of a boutique provider in the data and analytics space, but helps sets the stage for automation and AI with great data. And when I'm not doing all that, I actually do find time for other things. I'm editor of the Journal of AI, robotics and Workplace Automation published by Henry Stewart Publications out of the U.K. And I've been doing that. We just had our first full year of four issues, so we're celebrating Volume one. And I do some academic advisory as well with some universities in the Greater Philadelphia region.

Andreas Welsch: 2:37

Fantastic. Hey, really, it sounds like you are the person to talk to when it's when it's all about CoEs. I'm really glad that you joined. I know we've met earlier this year even in person and talked about some of these things. So I'm really excited that we're able to make this happen and you're able to join. So thanks again.

Chris Johannessen: 2:58

You're welcome

Andreas Welsch: 2:58

For those of you just joining the stream, drop a comment in the chat if you're leading a CoE or if you are or have been working in one, or if you just wanna learn more about it and maybe join one and see if that is, is an organizational model that would appeal to you. But maybe Chris, should we play a little game and kick things off?

Chris Johannessen: 3:20

Sure. Why not?

Andreas Welsch: 3:21

Awesome. So game time. So this game is called In Your Own Words. When I hit the buzzer, the wheels will start spinning and when they stop, you'll see a sentence and I'd like you to answer with the first thing that comes to mind and why, in your own words. And, to make it a little more interesting, you'll only have 60 seconds for your. Are you ready for, What's the BUZZ?

Chris Johannessen: 3:51

I'm ready. I'm getting ready player one. Okay, perfect. If AI were a tool in a hardware store, what would it be? If it were a tool in a hardware store, it would be something that could help me find tool, other tools much more easily than my wanderings around our local Lowe's and Home Depot and even the the family run hardware shop that's in my in my area. I honestly sometimes spend way too much time looking for the right size, nut, bolt screw when I'm trying to do some household project.

Andreas Welsch: 4:28

Fantastic. And well within the minute. When you said something that could help me find other tools, I was envisioning it directory, but how you described it sounds a lot more personalized and a lot more specific to your needs.

Chris Johannessen: 4:40

Yeah, it could be like so we have in our local supermarkets in the state of Pennsylvania, one of them has a robot that kind of rolls, rolls around the aisles, and it could be something like that with a funny face on. Talks to me, gives me clues.

Andreas Welsch: 4:56

Very true. Yes. And my little ones are never quite sure whether to be excited or to be scared when it follows them through the aisle Anyways. So let's jump into our questions. I feel a lot of times these days if I say automation, you say CoE. It's that well connected. And it seems that, at least to me, it's like the go-to org setup in a company if you want to get started with AI and automation. But before going there and into that default model, maybe let me ask you this, when should you actually set up a CoE and when shouldn't you?

Chris Johannessen: 5:34

That's an interesting question. It depends on the industry vertical that your company is in. It depends on the size of the company as well. Obviously for a very small company. Andreas might be the CEO, the one person CoE. There's a funny meme that floats around the internet and LinkedIn recently about where's all the company knowledge. And then there's a picture of some person that says, I am the knowledge. So there's certainly some scale considerations in terms of the the current state, but also the future state aspirations. Other things might be you have to do a little bit of just like somebody might be in terms of a little bit of startup thinking, do a little exploring and see if somebody's doing some automation already within the company. Typically you find pockets of automation in areas such as maybe finance with depending again on a company with some risk automation or something like. In marketing, those are areas where you might to see some automation in play as well even in call center operations or other internal operations. So it all depends on the the industry vertical. Certainly for the organizations at SAP tends to work with, and I'm sure a lot of our audience is part of today. Larger scale organizations start to think towards an automation CoE and with that you have to have. Shared definition of what automation actually is in the first place. Like I said, some people might hear the word automation and just think, oh, reporting automation, the analytics people ready to do that. You don't need a CoE if you're looking to bring something rather new and innovative in robotic process automation, AI is a service software platforms or even smart workflow that are out there now that have some AI capabilities. There might be some workflow already existing in the organization, but if not, that would certainly be a ripe op opportunity for bringing automation in. Now AI is a different animal. I've heard different people say maybe AI should just be part of the automation CoE. I've heard some people recently say AI should be part of analytics because in order to do proper AI. People think AI they tend to default to statistical ways of doing decisioning, such as machine learning based type of AI or semantic rules, engines, types of AI. And with that, you need data scientists who build models who then push the models into something and where else is a better place in that than with the analytics team. Although sometimes they say no, it should be with the automation team because the endpoint is to make this stuff automated in production, whether it's internally facing or customer facing, depending on context.

Andreas Welsch: 8:30

So maybe building on that, what would you say is like the key role of the CoE when you when you set it up where, when you have a dedicated team for it?

Chris Johannessen: 8:40

First and foremost, the key role is gonna be educating the organization. About just what automation and AI is in that particular context. And with that, some of the older models I mentioned, back in the day we just did a one size fits all CoE and you know how commercials used to be, write the ad for the Super Bowl, write a big giant check, one commercial fits all. But now you have to think about not only the audiences internally, bringing a little bit of newer thinking. Some people might be aware of the idea of design thinking and thinking about personas within the organization. You're gonna be targeting automation and AI as a value driver to different people and a company, not only their different role levels and responsibility, but also different functions as well across, we're leader of operations versus leader of marketing. So you have to get that story out there. What's the value proposition? It may start as simple as a slideshow. You may do some company events or lunch and learns, things like that to draw and drive some awareness or things like that. And with that, you start to identify, I noticed someone dropped in the idea of champions. It's always good to find a champion, someone who is either already excited about the topic. Could just be an executive who saw some machine shining and magical at an event and said, I need that too. Or they heard competitor 1 23 has it and they feel like they have a gap as company number four in a vertical that they've gotta do some catch up.

Andreas Welsch: 10:18

I know I'm a little late to taking a look at the chat, but I see some answers to our tool question from hammer to adjustable wrench, Swiss Army knife. A lot of good thoughts and suggestions there. So great, you set up this CoE. They should help educate and enable parts of the organization about what AI auto or automation or whatever other topic is. And it's great, right? As a leader, to your point, you've made that decision I need a coE. I understand why I would want one. Maybe you've been just hired to set one up. And I feel one of the next steps is what should that org structure and that setup look like? And what does the engagement model with my stakeholders look like? So I'm curious what do you've seen there and what you recommend?

Chris Johannessen: 11:05

As with any kind of new anything resembling a program in an organization at least with the stakeholders, you want to, say, you have this mission, almost like a mission and a vision for what the CoE is all about. Not only the materials to get people motivated and excited about the rewards of automation, but also the risk as well. But you've gotta be able to educate the audience on what the risk and rewards and talk about a timeline and a process for how you're gonna start bringing the CoE to life. Like what does the early stages look like? What's like the middle stages and what's the ideal end state of what the CoE's supposed to do. And of course, CoE's supposed to be more about just educating, getting people excited. You've gotta have policies and procedures going towards the risk side, you have to be careful. And that reminded me of your remark earlier this week on LinkedIn where you don't want the CoE to be like a cop and stopping presses and people no longer get excited. But all the things in between, who are the experts CoE might just start with simple as an expert directory. But then you could talk about what does it take to bring these things to life in terms of a process evaluating the CoE. What are some metrics for the CoE going forward? There's certainly. an array of different considerations. And again, it depends not only on the audience, but you also have to think in another risk factor of the especially with some of the more sensitive areas with automation lately, things such as ethics might come up to question how do ethics play a role?

Andreas Welsch: 12:42

Perfect. So maybe taking one question from Jesse. So you're saying it's important to have the ability to speak to each different stakeholder in the terms of the different things that they want out of the CoE, so related alignment, right, to paraphrase what you said. Now I'm sure everyone is curious to hear maybe about one example where you've seen this CoE setup be really successful and why that has been the case? What has made it successful?

Chris Johannessen: 13:10

We've had some recent examples or setting up a CoE with a high technology company. That was one where automation was actually brought in to the data and analytics CoE, as I mentioned, that could be one example. Because in that organization automation was pretty new, but they felt data and analytics people that create models, were just gonna have all the automation, the intelligent automation and AI stuff as part of the CoE, part of what helped bring that to life in terms of. Looking at a little bit more macro levels, having the right operating model in place is certainly a consideration. Depending on the organization, some organizations might start slow and have things a bit more centralized. It's well known that there are three or four different archetypes. Some people call them organizing models for operating models where you might eventually scale towards something where you have a central group. really setting all the standards, managing all the tools, the licenses and all sorts of other things, but educating the rest of the organization to be a bit more self-service and help hopefully get to the point where they may even become, as you might hear these days, the idea of a citizen developer, citizen automator. I haven't quite heard anybody say that they're a citizen AI specialist yet, but you maybe three or five years down to time. timeline that it might you might see something like that, but that was one where it really took off. Another one was one where part of what drove the excitement was putting some branding around the co o e almost making it almost like a digital storefront as certainly a component, especially in a modern context. Some CoEs that that don't succeed are weaken that regard. I've seen people try to drive a CoE off of a share drive which of course is not gonna. Or just a simple internet page or two. But when you have a rather robust internal digital presence that you can even put some custom branding around and even do some fun things, create some events lunch and learns You'll see a legacy tool and behind me, something I'd used before the rise of mural and other tools like Figma was I would I actually had a a marker board on wheels and I would just wheel it, people would laugh. I would wheel it onto the elevator of one of the places I was at, go up a floor and I would do lessons for half an hour right at somebody's desk, diagramming, drawing. If I couldn't do something larger and more of a context or a classroom. Automation can be tricky. In terms of success and failure. You might have to do some broader organizational lunch and learns. With one of my clients in another part of the world, we did a large scale lunch and learn for the entire organization to sit in to help allay their concerns about automation, because at that time, there was quite a bit of press about the threats of automation. So we showed some research that like, look, there's more stuff to do than there's gonna be enough people. Lots of stuff to do. People down below and in between is there, there's way more to do than there's enough people to basically handle the work. And sometimes you have to play it safe with a little bit of a little bit of internal education to just kinda get people to be like, automation's not a scary thing. It's actually gonna help you out, free you up. Maybe you take a class cuz you can't do things cuz you're stuck doing some chore or task three days outta the month, every single month. That could potentially be automated.

Andreas Welsch: 16:55

That's a great point. Really helping take away that fear and show that it's not as scary as you might think when you hear AI or automation, right? There's one other question I have for you and specifically around the organizational models. Where or how do you see CoE starting? Is it typically that it's centralized and then over time maybe it matures in, into something like a federated model where maybe the CoE looks more after a standardization in governance in these type of things, but the individual satellites are independent and run the day-to-day on their own? Or do you see companies starting already with the federated model? Or maybe other, even other models than just those two that you've seen be successful.

Chris Johannessen: 17:42

Especially when you're bringing a CoE to life it's just good to always keep that old maximum of crawl, walk, run. I have seen some companies try to run right to the federated model, which some people some people do see that as like the for those of you not in, who aren't aware, there are these different models. You start with a central model. There might be something that evolves towards a hub and spoke, and then be, things become a little bit more decentralized. I've heard some of these things be called competency centers before you get to CoE in terms of a maturity model. But maturity could be something that's a bit more of a misnomer that you have to watch out for because for some, you, someone might show up and give you all this advice. Management consultant here, giving you a little bit of warning about some of the other friends I have out there in the world. And maturity can sometimes be confused with complexity where they show you all this complicated stuff. You're like, oh, how can I get there? It's like you don't have to worry about getting there. You just have to be worry about having an impact and driving value in your organization. And some of these that I've seen fizzle is they try to do that, try to run right towards the aspirations and the end goal rather than getting some wins along the way and kind of building up your story and scaling up the CoE over time.

Andreas Welsch: 19:04

That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that. I think that's a very important part for anyone wondering, will, how do I actually.

Chris Johannessen: 19:10

Another insight that I'll share there real quick is when depending on the organization, a CoE might be just part of somebody's existing job and if you don't have the right personality in place for that, they can fizzle cuz they're just overworked, they're not excited. They see it as another thing that you throw on top of their list and they're just like, oh, I gotta do this. I gotta do all this other stuff. I got wife kids or husband kids, or, partner and kids, depending on what's going on and and personal life, too.

Andreas Welsch: 19:40

Got it. So maybe can you summarize the three key points for our audience to take away from today's episode? We talked a bit about do you even need one? Do you even need a CoE? What are the organizational models and when does it work well? What should people take away from today?

Chris Johannessen: 19:57

The first thing is to make sure that you do the right kind of assessment before you even try to bring a CoE into place. It's good to have a some kind of assessment to help you score the organization, do your own internal research. Like I said, think of it as like a startup product market fit. The next is if you do find an audience and receptivity, start to paint the picture of your mission and your vision and your roadmap for how the CoE can come to life, and then to pilot it and find some wins. And last but not least, a internal digital storefront is usually the way to go because at least you can have a link to that and people can email a link out and say, learn more about my CoE, and send a link instead of toying them with a big PowerPoint deck or something.

Andreas Welsch: 20:41

Awesome. Thanks so much for the summary. Now, folks, we're getting close to the end of the show. Thank you so much for joining us and for sharing your expertise and for those of you in the audience for learning with us. Thanks.

Chris Johannessen: 20:54

No, thank you for the opportunity. There's plenty to talk about here.