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- Gen AI success starts with business clarity, emotional intelligence, and ethical governance.
- Leaders must define outcomes and test prototypes quickly to see real value from Gen AI.
- Effective Gen AI adoption requires addressing resistance, risk, and human factors in integration.
Organizational leaders are rightly asking one vital question as technological acceleration creates a business strategy whirlwind: what mindset do we need to adopt generative AI successfully?
Rick Madan, SVP and Head of TEKsystems Global Services (TGS) shared in an interview with me that the answer isn’t to race toward shiny new tools — it’s to ground that enthusiasm in business clarity, emotional intelligence, and governance that scales with ambition.
Through nearly three decades of technology leadership, Madan has seen plenty of hype come and go. But when it comes to Gen AI, he’s clear: while the possibilities are expansive, the process must begin with deep introspection and intentional design.
Learning From the Past to Move Into the Future
TGS’s journey with AI began not with generative models, but with traditional machine learning frameworks nearly eight years ago. The company’s early successes were rooted in hard business problems that demanded precision and creativity — like helping a global oil and gas firm predict the end-of-life of multi-million-dollar subsea sensors. That project alone saved tens of millions by using predictive models to anticipate and preempt equipment failures.
From there, the team at TGS expanded their AI expertise into manufacturing optimization for chipmakers and later into fraud detection, customer support automation, and document processing for industries from finance to telecom.
But the real turning point, Madan explains, came with the emergence of generative AI in late 2022. No longer confined to deterministic workflows, organizations began exploring more autonomous, goal-driven AI agents capable of deriving insight and acting upon data without rigid rule-based structures.
That shift opened up a new world of both opportunity and complexity.
One illustrative case involved a global retailer that had initially leveraged traditional ML to personalize online shopping experiences. While the results were strong — enhancing CX and conversions — introducing generative AI agents created a step-change in outcomes.
These agents not only improved fraud detection by collaborating in real time (e.g., between security and transaction agents), but also delivered dramatic increases in Net Promoter Scores. Yet, as Madan cautions, the jump from improvement to transformation required more than just technology.
It Starts With the Consciousness, Not the Code
For Madan, the most successful Gen AI projects begin with a candid conversation about what matters most to the organization. Before any system is architected or any agent deployed, TGS takes its clients through a discovery process focused on what he calls the “consciousness” of the business.
What are the real pressures — economic, regulatory, stakeholder-driven — that are shaping strategic decisions? What specific outcomes are desired, whether in customer satisfaction, cost optimization, or new revenue?
This isn’t just philosophical. It’s practical. Too many companies fall into the trap of letting technical jargon or platform vendors steer the conversation before truly defining what success means.
By anchoring the process in outcome clarity — whether it’s stabilizing margins in a volatile supply chain or restoring historical efficiency benchmarks — Gen AI investments become tied to measurable, impactful goals.
Once this clarity is established, success is now about moving from minimal viable products to agent-based solutions with real user impact — fast.
Navigating Resistance, Risk, and Reality
Even with the right vision, Gen AI adoption isn’t frictionless. Madan aligns closely with a four-part framework for addressing common implementation challenges: psychological resistance, technical integration, structural misalignment, and systemic risk. But he adds his own nuance, starting with what he calls emotional change management (ECM).
In his view, too many organizations underestimate the human element of AI integration. Roles are shifting, legacy systems are sunsetting, and long-standing ways of working are dissolving.
“Emotional change management almost becomes like a frog boiling for the contrarians,” he says. Meaningful adoption happens when organizations respect emotional realities — not bulldoze through them.
Technically, legacy systems, uneven data quality, and siloed infrastructures can still stall even the most promising AI initiatives. Structurally, Madan recommends cross-functional steering groups, not just to ensure stakeholder buy-in, but to reflect the reality that data and AI touch every part of the enterprise.
Generative AI goes beyond IT; it is a key driver of business transformation.
From data privacy and bias mitigation to hallucination control and IP protection, every generative solution must be backed by robust governance. Internally, TGS has codified its AI ethics under a simple but powerful acronym: FATE—Fair, Accountable, Transparent, and Ethical.
Their legal team plays a central governance role, reviewing models, redlines, and outputs to ensure compliance and social responsibility. For clients lacking internal audit functions, Madan recommends tapping into specialized AI governance firms to build that oversight structure from the ground up.
Hype Is Loud — But Reality Is What Matters
Madan is quick to point out the hype cycle that Gen AI is riding right now. He’s seen the rhetoric from CEOs declaring they’ll run billion-dollar operations with no humans, only AI agents. But as he shares, many of those early braggarts are now reversing course.
Customer satisfaction and business outcomes have dipped, and companies are relearning a lesson as old as enterprise itself: people still matter.
“There’s nothing that really feels like you could ever build in a lab that’s going to compete with the specialness of what we have inside us — our soul and our spirit,” he says. “But there is code that can be a companion, that can be an augment, that can be an accelerator to those things.”
The future of Gen AI, in Madan’s view, must involve a recalibration — not toward dehumanization, but toward harmony. That means building systems where agents assist rather than replace, where AI enables trust rather than undermines it, and where technological ambition never outpaces ethical responsibility.
Moving Forward With Grounded Optimism
The pace of AI innovation will continue to accelerate, and enterprises that fail to adapt will find themselves outpaced and outmaneuvered. As Madan highlights, adaptation involves focusing on humanity, ethics, and business rigor in driving transformation.
For leaders looking to leverage Gen AI, the key is to pause, ask the right questions, and build on clarity, empathy, and accountability. Because in a world of agentic possibility, it’s still the human mindset that determines whether the journey succeeds or stalls.
