Talking AI Transformation on the IKEA Podcast

In a career highlight, I recently appeared on the IKEA podcast filmed at their head office in Älmhult, talking about AI Transformation.

This was only a little bit daunting given their global excellence in Digital and AI Transformation. Yet with a shared passion and background in retail, e-commerce and AI it was a rich conversation with host global PR lead for Tech and AI, Dani Hooper. Find the episode here.

Myself and Kat Wirth get ready for the real thing with Dani Hooper from IKEA (Ingka Holdings)

Here are some of my top tips for business leaders and AI practitioners to ensure transformation is both effective and sustainable.

1. Integration over Isolation

One of the most common mistakes in AI transformation is AI being treated as a ‘Tech team’ project, isolating it somewhat. My personal experience has shown how ineffective change could be if specialists effectively sit in a corner. When it comes to business-wide change, you have to be ‘in it’. In the conversation I shared the nickname we were given in my Unilever days - jack-in-a-box. When I worked in digital commerce during the pandemic, speed was key, so we appeared in as many town halls, team meetings and project kick-offs as we could, so everyone in the business knew the importance of the channel and factored it into their plans.

AI will impact your whole business. If AI is to serve the whole business, it can’t exist in a vacuum. 

2. Be an AI-Powered Leadership Team

Transformation begins with leadership. While leaders do not need to be technical visionaries, they require a foundational level of AI literacy to effectively lead. Once leaders understand the basics, they can have more informed conversations, have more accurate expectations and better challenge accuracy.

Similar to many large organisations, IKEA has experts in data, analytics and AI. However, AI has become a core skill for every professional. Leaders need to understand AI to understand how it could shape their function - and plan accordingly.

3. Prioritise Problems, Not Technology

Businesses often fall into the trap of experimentation that creates multiple AI tools, agents and chatbots, because the technology is available. This is great in a controlled setting. But there also needs to be structure over what then becomes embedded.

I have always started with inspiration and skills. I once ran a session at Diageo and remember the diverse and excited ideas for AI that were generated soon afterward. The Sustainability team saw they would use it one way and the category team saw another opportunity related to their day-to-day work.

Before leading with the technology, start with the business challenges everyone is tackling right now. This is far easier than looking for a place to use the technology - it’s also immediately valuable. As I said to Dani, I challenge anyone working in this space to get as excited about the problems it should be solving as the AI itself. In my work I start with quick wins, those well known daily challenges that are not very complex but everyone would agree is useful. Starting with a time-saving or smart solution kicks off a transformation on the right footing.

4. Fire Up the "AI Changemakers"

Beyond leadership, a successful transformation requires an AI-literate culture across the entire organisation. I turned my approach into a programme  "AI Changemakers" where those passionate employees and early adopters get the opportunity to drive change in their function. It’s a structured approach focused on identifying where opportunity lies and collaborating to experiment toward measurable outcomes.

This is in contrast to what I think the role of an AI Champion in many organisations entails. The role of an AI Champion often seems vague and the expectation is far greater than the support and clarity allows. Instead, AI Changemakers take a bottom-up approach, where real-world challenges are addressed and a practical experimental approach allows internal capability to grow, all feeding into an overaching plan for the future.

5. Aim for Augmentation, Not Automation

When it comes to large and complex organisations, I am a fan of augmentation over automation. Augmentation is more democratic and can be a way of working that scales quickly. There is trapped talent in every organisation often buried under the administrative ‘work of work’. This moment gives us the opportunity to redesign processes; where employees can reshape their roles to both be more efficient and have more impact. The goal is that people become more effective, where augmentation leads to greater time to focus on high-value tasks, such as strategy and building relationships.

6. Trust and Security are Competitive Advantages

In the rush to adopt AI, there is a danger businesses may sacrifice their heritage or risk customer trust. In my opinion, there is only one way to use AI, and that’s safely and securely. How to do that in an oragnisation is not with an AI policy sitting on Sharepoint. The business needs to live and breathe safety and security - role modelled by leaders - and as I saw in Ikea’s HQ, made visible continuously.

The irony is that established companies can have an advantage versus the newer tech companies here - they’re established, often well-loved as well as well-known. Personally I think such retailers should lean into this heritage and do all they can to maintain the trust they have built over decades - it’s a significant advantage.

7. Embrace the Resistors

Resistance when driving change can be relentless. It shows up in many ways - overt challenges from vocal team members or more subtle resistance in the pace to try, change or adopt. I have found embracing the resistors however can be strategically valuable.

AI is a contentious topic - we need to be able to listen and answer peoples concerns. Equally, there is work to be done around these topics - understanding and responding to risks, bias, impact on the environment. 

My belief is that AI can be a catalyst for transformation. Rather than react and rush, we can ask "What do we actually want to achieve?". The next step is to gather your best people, build the expertise and go after the goals that matter.

Lead by Example. Aim High.

What an honour to have this conversation with a global, iconic brand who is one of the best examples of a values-driven, innovative organisation. You see AI in my mind should be behind the scenes of simply great business moves.

For instance, Billie, the IKEA Chatbot helped IKEA with 47% of customer queries - but studying the other 53% opened up new revenues streams. IKEA reskilled 8,500 customer care teams in interior design to offer this services to callers.

With core pillars around Affordability, Accessibility, and Circularity, IKEA have heavily investing in lowering retail prices and created instore Circular Hubs to enable a secondhand furniture buyback scheme. They react to the times and are innovative. Like any large organisation they need to make difficult decisions such as restructuring central management for greater speed and agility. AI is often blamed for this, but we need to remember it’s emergence has convened with a volatile economy, as much as it is popular to point to in headlines.

As Ingka's Chief People & Culture Officer Ulrika Biesert has said "people have been at the heart of IKEA for over 80 years, and that's exactly where they'll stay."

Having met such innovative, welcoming and humble people on my trip, I can see why. AI Transformation starts and ends with people. I hope we can all take a proactive approach that’s good for both people and business.