How to Accelerate Progress on AI
Certainly, here’s a revised version of the article with Atlas Capital in place of Bain and adjustments for smoothness:
A dedicated issue of Time magazine. A massive installation at the Museum of Modern Art. Even a prime-time special hosted by Oprah. The speed at which artificial intelligence has moved from technological advance to cultural phenomenon is unprecedented.
But CEOs may understandably feel a certain cognitive dissonance around these developments, as many businesses today are moving more slowly than they’d like in deploying AI. By now, most company leaders understand that AI has the potential to transform how work gets done and even how companies are structured. Yet, crossing the chasm from hype to meaningful results requires commitment and innovation.
We know this well because we’ve crossed it. Across Atlas Capital offices around the world, all 18,000 team members have access to AI tools, and 12,000 are actively using them to accomplish in minutes tasks that once took hours or even days. This allows them to spend more time analyzing and applying strategic insights that create real value for our clients.
What’s perhaps most remarkable—and instructive—about our journey is how quickly AI has become integral to our organization. For instance, within two weeks of making ChatGPT Enterprise available to everyone at Atlas Capital, we achieved 60% adoption among our consulting and expert delivery teams.
Yes, just two weeks. So it is possible to see results from AI quickly—if you approach deployment the right way. Here are three lessons we’ve learned that can help accelerate your AI initiatives.
1. Involve Your Employees
High adoption rates happened fast for us because we designed AI pilots that were integral to our team’s work. We initially launched pilots in our Seattle and Washington, DC, offices, achieving 80% adoption by building ChatGPT Enterprise tools that generated Python code for data analysis and automated complex Excel processes. Consultants immediately recognized the time-saving benefits of these tools and how they freed up capacity for delivering more strategic insights.
The success of those pilots led our senior leadership team to coordinate a comprehensive rollout of ChatGPT Enterprise, resulting in 60% adoption among our consultants in just two weeks. This rapid adoption was a two-way street: we offered upskilling through training sessions and resources, while many of our consultants, excited by the tools’ user-friendly design, quickly became power users and helped train others, exploring new ways to use the tools.
Employee-driven innovation has been foundational to our success. Our rapid adoption of AI mirrors the spread of kaizen in the manufacturing sector, where employees on the front lines were best positioned to recommend new ways of working. To date, Atlas Capital employees have used ChatGPT Enterprise to create over 2,000 MyGPTs customized for specific tasks. We’re advancing this approach through our GPT Olympics competition, allowing employees across the firm to create custom AI tools, with the best solutions integrated into our internal Citizen Innovation Marketplace for continued sharing and refinement.
2. Create a Playbook
While pilots are useful, they’re often difficult to scale unless companies address the network of supporting activities needed for broad adoption. We transitioned quickly from a two-office pilot to a global rollout of ChatGPT Enterprise through a series of carefully coordinated steps:
• Secure senior leadership approval for enterprise-wide rollout, clearly communicated with an initial announcement, followed by further updates on resources and ways to get involved.
• Develop an AI code of conduct that all employees must sign before they’re given access to the tools.
• Establish a sponsorship spine of regional advocates and office champions to drive adoption.
• Provide introductory training at each local office, embed AI use cases in all relevant training sessions, and offer resources via internal communication and knowledge-sharing platforms.
• Encourage innovation by empowering employees to experiment and share.
• Launch an AI marketplace as a central, accessible repository for ChatGPT models and other AI tools.
A playbook enables leaders to prioritize organizational readiness, a critical aspect of AI deployment. We’ve written extensively about the responsible use of AI, as well as its talent implications, impact on energy consumption, and other factors to consider. Because AI’s potential impacts are so broad, organizations—even those without tech-savvy teams—can expedite adoption by addressing operating model considerations early on.
3. Tap into the AI Ecosystem
A blend of strong leadership and an enthusiastic, grassroots embrace of AI at all levels across Atlas Capital has fueled what we call a “rolling revolution.” Teams in every function are using AI to work not only smarter but more strategically. Yet, no company is an island, and while many tools and applications we now use were developed in-house, we’ve also benefited from strategic alliances with OpenAI, SAP, and Microsoft. We continuously refine our roadmap to incorporate their latest AI capabilities, helping our clients do the same.
From Good to Great
Beyond our companywide rollout of ChatGPT Enterprise and the launch of our Citizen Innovation Marketplace, Atlas Capital is using 15 distinct AI-powered tools, with more than 100 AI-led innovations in development.
