AI Audio Summary and Discussion
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In the past ten years, my team at Proving Ground has worked across the globe with designers and builders to define and implement strategies that help businesses develop the capabilities of their people, streamline their processes, and adopt tools that offer tangible value to their business.
As we gained experience with developing strategic roadmaps, we have developed a set of methods built around a core set of interrelated organizational characteristics that often determine if a strategy will be successful: smarts, health, and fitness. For organizations, these characteristics drive an organization’s ability to perform, adapt, and be resilient.
What does it mean for an organization to be…
- …Smart? A smart organization will have readily available (and well documented) processes, procedures, and governance to support adoption and implementation of digital tools, workflows, data, and platforms.
- …Healthy? A healthy organization will have defined roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities to support productive, equitable, and sustainable working environments.
- …Fit? A fit company will have identified outcomes, performance objectives, and measures of success to determine if their strategies and initiatives are working and the company is improving.
A central observation I have personally have made with various businesses is that they would demonstrate strength in one characteristic while showing weakness in others. For example, some organizations will invest heavily in their ‘smarts’: procuring the latest tools, developing robust standards, and creating extensive data warehouses. However, these investments may not have been delivering the level of value dictated by their cost because their organization lacked ‘healthy’ or ‘fitness’ characteristics: they might have had higher staff turnover, accountability for successful data initiatives were not assigned, or the measures of success were not defined.
It is not uncommon for technology leaders and their strategies to have a strong bias towards tactics that impact the ‘smart’ characteristics of a company. CTOs, IT professionals, software developers, and design technologists use their rich technical experience to advise on these matters. These leaders may be less comfortable in delving into matters for advising on organizational behaviors (health) or revenue performance metrics (fitness). However, it is precisely these matters where digital strategies are able to deliver real, lasting impact on an organization.
Here are three ideas for evolving your digital strategy for greater, long-term impact…
Accountability for digital initiatives should extend beyond the experts.
Throughout my career, I have observed (and experienced) that accountability for the success or failure of a digital initiative often rests on the shoulders of a select individual or a small team. Even today – in 2025 – I have had strategic workshops with business stakeholders who want little or nothing to do with the digital transformations occurring within their company. “I’m a designer not a technologist” or “I’m just a project manager and can’t be bothered by this.” are still quite common refrains.
While experts are important in the early stages of adoption, the full impact of a digital transformation is felt when a large majority of stakeholders are participating.
Leaders are tempted to organize their initiatives around small teams or individuals who have strong interest or expertise in the topic. While experts are important in the early stages of adoption, the full impact of a digital transformation is felt only when a larger majority of the organization is participating in it’s recommendations. As recently as 2024, we worked with a global design practice who had a number of business sectors still struggling with adopting BIM practices – their solution for some groups was to hire two BIM experts and funnel the entire sector’s production work through them. As you can imagine, these experts became burnt out and projects experienced bottlenecks as the larger teams did not take up responsibility for their own production process.
With the rise of AI-based technologies, I have started to observe a new shift – almost a kind of inversion – in this area. With another global practice, I observed that AI adoption had been occurring outside of the influence and guardrails of their IT and technology initiatives – and often among stakeholders who had not shown interest in past digital initiatives. In fact, business stakeholders were taking up buying their own AI tools for their work. Their internal technology teams were having a hard time keeping up with this as their internal processes for evaluation and governance were proving to be too slow and onerous for designers who were excited to take up this new technology in their work.
In either case, strategic consideration to the broader accountability for the digital transformation is critical. If it’s in the adoption of a technical skill-heavy industry software – like BIM or computational design – the build up of broader knowledge networks, provision of training opportunities, and clear edicts from sector leaders of new expectations are essential to avoid bottlenecks and realize the value of these investments. Meanwhile – in the case of new trends like AI – strategies for more organic growth of user groups and inclusion of excited non-expert users in organizational testing and evaluation of new technologies can create an inclusive environment for setting up health-driven strategies from the bottom-up.
Digital success is measured in terms of business success.
The ultimate aim of any strategy is to produce positive outcomes for the business – this is the fitness component of a strategy. In the case of a digital strategy, investments in technology, new skills, and related performance objectives should naturally have alignments with the success metrics used by the business. Questions like “Does the investment make the operations of the company more efficient?” or “Does the investment provide new value to customers?” are natural high level questions to answer within the strategy. However, the suitability of a success metric – while perhaps compelling on its face – might be misaligned with the company’s actual operations or values. For example, let’s consider a few paradoxical situations that I’ve come across in the world of digital transformations:
- A design company invests in a new program that touts automation that will reduce project hours spent on specific technical tasks. However, the business does not track their project billings in terms of hours spent on specific tasks. (potential operational misalignment)
- An architect invests in generative AI-powered systems for image generation and writing – which have significant energy impacts. However, their business has also committed to design goals pertaining to sustainability and reduced carbon footprint. (potential value misalignment)
The misalignment between a specific tactic (like adopting new technology) and how business success is measured can create a significant disconnect for communicating why the tactic is being adopted in the first place. For the design company investing in automation, it may be less important that “time is getting saved” and more important that a designer is better able to prioritize tasks more worthy of their effort – they are not saving time, they are using the time they have to create project value. The distinction here is important in that it more clearly distinguishes why the designer should participate in the change using a measure that aligns with their work.
Misalignment between a specific tactic and how business success is measured can create a significant disconnect for communicating why the tactic is being adopted in the first place.
Similarly, a sustainability-focused architect investing in an AI-power system that comes with a carbon footprint might also use their digital strategy to position how AI can be used to develop design solutions that are more sustainable than they could without it. In this case, the architect might be able to justify how the energy spent by the AI system can be put towards design solutions that are better for the environment. This alignment then becomes a means to motivate adoption of the important technology in a manner that demonstrates a connection to the company’s values.
Business leaders and managers… you’re not off the hook!
When it comes to matters related to implementing a new technology initiative, it is often assumed that the responsibility will fall on a select group of savvy individuals. Meanwhile, certain business stakeholders will view these initiatives as being “not in my wheelhouse.” In the past, this was an easier claim to make as technology initiatives at design business often involved the implementation of more conventional IT infrastructure. Or perhaps the initiative is in the adoption of computational software that would have very little impact over the activities of a principle or a manager who were not active in the world of 3D modeling – to say nothing of algorithm generation!
Today’s most significant advancements in technology – consequently a business’ digital transformation – have broader implications than they ever have. The uses of AI are increasingly part of everyday life and AI-based features are becoming embedded in numerous software packages which will impact across every business sector. Activities for data collection and analysis are seeing applications in business financials, marketing data, and in BIM applications.
All stakeholders – including and especially business leaders – need to be brought on board and be provided guidance in how they should participate.
To realize the potential of today’s digital transformations means that all stakeholders – from designers to business leaders – need to be brought on board and provided guidance in how they should expect to participate. In a recent strategic roadmap focused on AI, a central tactic was the formation of sector-based user groups where different stakeholders would actively support the testing and adoption of AI-powered tools for their unique needs. Additionally, leaders in this organization would need to actively contribute by ensuring that their clients were aware of certain capabilities as they were helping to create project value or avoid certain risks of use.
Setting up the conditions for transformational success.
A number of years ago, I cited a statistic on this blog that 84% of digital transformations fail. Research in this area had shown this to be the result of a “failure to change behavior” within the organization. Culture eats the best digital strategies for breakfast.
Out of this central observation evolved our strategy model of considering the interdependent characteristics of organizational smarts, health, and fitness. It is not enough to prescribe the best processes, standards, and tools that can be afforded by the organization – these investments must be enabled by a healthy culture where there is broad accountability for transformation and with outcomes that are measurable in the context of how we want the business to perform.
How can Proving Ground help?
Do you want to create impactful strategies that can help your organization become more adaptable, resilient, and innovative? We have developed digital transformation strategies for some of the most creative designers and builders in the world. Contact us to learn how we can help your business evolve with today’s digital workflows.