Context
Successful use of AI requires framing your requests with as much context as possible. Context gives the agent background that should inform and shape the responses you get. Most of us focus on the context of the problem at hand. But there is a much greater context that explains how where that problem sits in the organization, how it is connected to other parts of the organization and what the ultimate goals are for the collective group.
Organizational Context
What is organizational context? It’s the information that explains not only what needs to be done in a specific part of the organization. It’s also the information about how that part of the company fits into the overall company.
An easy way to understand this is to build on the analogy I shared last month at XPX in a post about on the Corporate Value Engine using Russ Acoff’s explanation of an automobile design
“Let’s just take a simple example. I read in the New York Times recently that four hundred and fifty-seven different automobiles are available in the United States. Let’s buy one of each and bring them into a large garage. Let’s then hire 200 of the best automotive engineers in the world and ask them to determine which car has the best engine. Suppose they come back and say the Rolls-Royce is the best. Then you make a note of it which one has the best transmission. We ask them and they go run tests and come back and say the Mercedes. Which one has the best battery? They come back and say the Buick does. And one by one for every part required for an automobile, they tell us which is the best one available.
Now we take that list give it back to them and say remove those parts from those cars put them together into the best possible automobile. Because now we’ll have an automobile consisting of all the best parts. What do we get? You don’t even get an automobile. For obvious reasons, the parts don’t fit. The performance of a system depends on how the parts fit, not how they act taken separately.”
There’s a really powerful message here for the use of AI. If you don’t give your agent enough context, you’ll end up with great parts that don’t work together as a coherent system
How to Map Organizational Context
What should organizational include? Here are some of the components that we recommend mapping. You want to make sure your context provides as detailed an answer as you can to the core question of every organization:
How can we value for our customers in a way that also ensures the viability of our organization and our stakeholders?
Some of these elements to consider in creating this corporate context include:
- Target value creation for each section of the organization including current performance
- Processes used to deliver that value including their internal/external customers and suppliers
- Resources used by the processes including labor, tools and services
We recommend pulling this information into a single, unified location so everyone can access the same context, the single source of truth. This unified information is essentially a digital twin on the business, providing context for both people and agents to keep them on the same page. The benefits show up in better, faster decisions that optimize the parts and the whole value engine.
About Insights7: Our aligned execution hub helps companies unify strategy execution data and decision making. Advisors deliver their findings in our platform in an actionable form. This causes a fundamental shift from advising to helping make change happen. Our platform is a great fit for consultants who work at either the process or the strategy level. Let’s talk! We’ll start with your deliverables and map how these can become actionable in our system. Feel free to message me at XPX or connect and schedule with me on LinkedIn.
