Generative AI Changes Strategy: Unleashing Organizational Productivity and Success

For decades, organizations placed immense importance on how efficient teams were: how quickly they could produce results in a certain amount of time. As business needs shift, leadership teams are reevaluating organizational priorities to increase capacity for change and ability to win.

Now, enterprises are doubling down on productivity. High-growth teams are exploring AI-powered operational scalability that exponentially increases organizational output using the same amount of resources and delivers consistent performance.

Organizational Workflows

According to a Bain & Company, Inc. study, 20% of employee productivity is lost to “organizational drag” in the form of manual tasks, unnecessary meetings, and poor workflows. While some drag is inevitable in any organization, productivity can only be increased when efforts are made to correct the root causes. 

Part of your responsibility as a team-building leader is to make multi-faceted–and sometimes tough–decisions regarding process. You have to lead with a certain capacity for change and create organizational structure while preventing excessive bureaucracy and develop working models that allow employees to focus their time on the specific tasks they need to accomplish throughout the day.

How to Drive Productivity for Contracting Processes

Legal teams across various industries have a tendency to be seen as bottlenecks and time-blockers when it comes to getting projects across the finish line. However, as Margaret Minster, General Counsel at Evisort, puts it, “The legal department is not the ‘Department of No.’ Your legal team is skilled at negotiating and reaching mutually beneficial solutions to close deals and drive sales.” 

There has to be a way to banish this less-than-ideal reputation, while also addressing the current reality of tasks taking so long often due to manual efforts and drag. What can organizations do to successfully make the switch to a productivity mindset and achieve contracting goals while prioritizing employee satisfaction?

Enable Better Time Management

Take time to examine what is consuming the most time for your legal teams and actively work to streamline processes and eliminate unnecessary blockers. 

Consider implementing solutions that can help teams locate key data faster and track key terms with total visibility. Look into how you can integrate ERP and e-signature systems to deliver real-time data without having to bounce between programs.

Reformat Existing Processes

As a legal leadership team, look into your contracting processes. How are contracts and documents currently being managed? Where are they being stored? Is there a structure in place to allow for seamless collaboration between departments and third parties?

Take a page from Deloitte’s playbook and focus on your ability to win. Consider what few processes need to stay in place to achieve long-term success and, from there, open yourself up to pivoting elsewhere. In doing so, you can become a more exponential enterprise.

By having protocols in place that streamline contract management and help drive reviews and negotiations at a faster pace, you can better empower your employees to do their jobs and meet company goals.

Invest in Better Technology

Give your contracting teams the solutions they need to banish siloes, reduce organizational drag, and truly drive productivity. 

Emerging, legal-specific generative AI can enable faster, more intuitive drafting of new contracts and automatically redlining specific language as it learns your business’ unique guidelines. AI-powered contract lifecycle management tools can automate workflows and allow teams to save time tracking versions of agreements as they go through the negotiation process.

Empowering your team with the right technology can vastly improve everyone’s day-to-day. As generative AI continues to gain traction across business functions, employees will be able to complete tasks with greater ease and speed, boosting productivity and overall employee satisfaction.

By taking an honest look at your current structures and focusing on your ability to win and capacity for change, you can challenge the status quo of contracting productivity and enable your employees to feel valued and empowered to do their very best. While it may not be the easiest shift to make at first, taking this approach now will have compounding benefits for your organization as you charge forward.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

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