Driving Organizational Evolution with AI: How We Invest in Internal Generative AI Training

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, where innovation and technology are at the forefront of competitive advantage, the emergence of Generative AI (GenAI) represents a transformative shift. This technology is not merely an addition to the arsenal of digital tools available to enterprises but a fundamental change in how we conceive, design, and deliver solutions across industries. 

This change brings us to a critical transition point where early adopters of this technology stand to lead their respective industries. The key to this adoption and the vehicle to its promised efficiency gains is GenAI literacy. GenAI literacy is, without a doubt, the new pillar of modern literacy, alongside reading, writing, and computer skills. At Caylent, we recognize the monumental impact of GenAI and are committed to harnessing its potential for our customers and our advantage.

Striving to elevate our collective understanding and application of GenAI, we aim to deliver exceptional GenAI projects to our customers, harness internal opportunities to scale our capabilities, identify new business opportunities for GenAI solutions, and prepare our team for strategic GenAI initiatives spearheaded by our leadership.

We see tremendous potential to empower our team and enhance all aspects of our business, including service delivery and internal operations, by mastering AWS GenAI technologies in a few weeks. To systemize GenAI enablement across the Caylent organization, we have developed GenAI learning paths for Cayliens across departments. This empowerment makes Caylent the ideal employer for technologists looking to hone their skills and develop AI-enabled solutions for our diverse customer base.

To ensure our team is well-versed in cutting-edge GenAI skills, our GenAI learning paths include hands-on experience with essential GenAI literacy skills, such as prompt engineering, hallucinations, bias, toxicity, security, and safety, advanced concepts, such as retrieval augmented generation (RAG), modalities, and vector stores, and key AWS services such as Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker JumpStart, Kendra, OpenSearch Service, Comprehend, and Lex—to name a few.

Alongside the technical training, our learning paths also prepare non-technical team members to use GenAI in their roles. This includes aspects such as building a GenAI-ready organization and determining market opportunities alongside GenAI’s capabilities, from exploring the art of the possible to techniques for project planning.

The Imperative of AI Literacy and Adoption

The advent of GenAI has introduced a new dimension to the digital proficiency required in the modern workplace. AI literacy, encompassing skills such as prompt engineering, has become as crucial as traditional literacies like reading, writing, and basic computer skills. In this reality, navigating, understanding, and leveraging AI technologies is indispensable for businesses aiming to stay ahead, especially considering the swiftness with which this technology advances. Recognizing this, Caylent has embarked on a mission to foster a culture of continuous learning and innovation, ensuring our team is proficient in current technologies and prepared for tomorrow's advancements.

The Catalyst for Change: Caylent's GenAI Learning Paths

This initiative is rooted in our belief that the future of business hinges on the ability to evolve and implement cutting-edge technologies. By equipping our employees with a deep understanding of GenAI, we enable them to drive our company's growth, enhance our service offerings, and deliver exceptional value to our customers. 

Through the collaborative efforts of various departments, we designed our learning paths to blend theoretical knowledge with practical applications, offering a comprehensive program covering the spectrum of GenAI technology—from technical topics such as code generation, image manipulation, and model customization to business topics, such as understanding technology fundamentals, use cases, ethical considerations, and strategy. This holistic approach enhances learning outcomes and stimulates creativity and innovation.

Goals and Objectives

The primary goals of our learning paths are to elevate expertise within our team, cultivate skill development, and foster a culture of innovation. By enabling our Delivery Architects, Engineers, Customer Solution Architects, and Sales, Marketing, and leadership teams to leverage GenAI in their roles, we aim to drive strategic initiatives, deliver pioneering solutions, and open new avenues for business growth.

We do so by priming our Delivery Architects and Engineers with the skills required to deliver exceptionally high-quality solutions, our Customer Solution Architects to articulate innovative solutions, and our sales, marketing, and business leaders to unearth new avenues for growth and synergies with customers, using GenAI as the compass.

The Personas, Paths’ Structure and Curriculum

Learning paths are tailored for six key personas within Caylent:

GenAI Practitioners are everyday users of GenAI who stand to benefit from the productivity gains that GenAI promises. So, their learning path introduces them to GenAI technology, developing expertise in utilizing GenAI for various endeavors, from research and creative development, to code generation.

GenAI Developers are expert software developers who specialize in integrating GenAI with software applications and use GenAI through programmatic means. Their learning path introduces them to GenAI technology and services with an emphasis on software development, enabling them to utilize GenAI in their work through an application interface or programmatically.

Delivery Architects are technical experts who require a comprehensive understanding of GenAI, enabling them to design sophisticated solutions and guide technical strategy for GenAI projects. They balance depth vs. breadth of knowledge and are experts in discussing architectures and technology tradeoffs. Thus, their learning path should ensure depth and breadth of expertise in GenAI, enabling them to perform technical deep-dives, create implementation-level solutions, discuss nuanced technology options, cost, performance choices, and provide thought leadership on technology best practices.

Delivery Engineers, unlike Delivery Architects, are specialized technical experts. These technical specialists are responsible for implementing projects and possess the ability to dive deep into technical details relevant to their specialization. Their learning path should ensure depth of expertise in GenAI, enabling them to perform technical deep dives, execute implementation plans, and discuss nuanced aspects of GenAI technology, performance, and best practices. 

Pre-Sales Solution Architects (CSAs) bridge the gap between sales and delivery. They possess both technical knowledge and business acumen. They translate business needs into statements of work. Their learning path enables them to translate business problems into high-level GenAI problem statements and solutions and provides sufficient GenAI technical breadth to support their activities.

Business Cayliens are individuals from all other Caylent departments, including sales, marketing, HR, finance, and business leadership. They are key resources responsible for all non-technical delivery aspects of Caylent operations, including identifying business opportunities and setting organizational standards across Caylent. Dealing directly with potential customers, they identify business opportunities, using their in-depth knowledge of Caylent’s offerings to drive growth and customer engagement. So, their learning path enables them to identify GenAI opportunities and converse knowledgeably about them. It is also designed to amplify their ability to utilize GenAI in their work, from creative assistance to improving access to key internal knowledge. 

Each path is divided into three levels—Cadet, Copilot, and Captain—designed to build expertise and application skills in GenAI technologies progressively. This tiered approach ensures that employees at all levels can enhance their knowledge and skills, fostering a culture of lifelong learning and innovation.

• The cadet level aims to provide the minimal knowledge required to perform the persona’s job function—e.g., architect solutions, deliver solutions, identify GenAI opportunities, and scope opportunities.
• The copilot level equips individuals with the ability to perfect their GenAI expertise and elucidate the technical nuances of GenAI.
• The captain level is for those who have mastered GenAI and are looking to support future strategic initiatives at Caylent.

Structuring Learning Paths for Your Organization

We have had significantly positive feedback from Cayliens, who have utilized our GenAI learning paths to improve their knowledge and skillsets with the technology. The program has led to tangible improvements in project delivery, solution design, and customer satisfaction, highlighting the importance of continuous learning and adaptation in today's dynamic business environment and fuelling our trajectory toward growth and pioneering innovation.

We encourage organizations to utilize such learning paths to institute GenAI literacy and realize the transformative potential of GenAI within their organization. It is crucial to take the following considerations into account when considering a GenAI learning path:

GenAI benefits everyone! However, each role will experience GenAI’s impact differently and to a different degree. When crafting your learning strategy, keep all your employees in mind. Group your employees into personas based on their roles’ GenAI needs and potential impact, and craft their paths accordingly.

Answer the why! Leadership and employees alike will want to understand why a GenAI learning path is necessary rather than leaving AI literacy up to individuals' curiosity and initiative. Ensure the learning path aligns with your company's strategic goals and objectives. GenAI applies across various industries and use cases, so it's essential to tailor the learning path to address your company's business needs and challenges. Also, ensure that your employees understand the benefits they will gain from becoming GenAI literate, including efficiency gains and potential career advancements. Leadership and employee buy-in are key to success.

Offer individualized learning plans! Conducting an organization-wide GenAI skills gap analysis to understand your employees' existing knowledge and skill level is difficult for most. So, design your various personas’ learning paths with a zero-knowledge assumption and have your people managers use your learning paths to devise individualized learning plans for their reports that account for employee skill levels and schedules. This is a least-effort approach to ensuring employee training is personalized, positively challenging, and engaging.

Track and reward progress! Offering appropriate encouragement to employees goes a long way toward accelerating your organization’s AI literacy journey. Encouragements could be as simple as providing certifications, badges, or points on your rewards/spotlight platforms. Track your employees' learning progress to identify those needing further support, ramp up engagement, control costs, and tie back to ROI.

Opt for simplicity! The importance of AI literacy may lead one to over-engineer their learning paths, adding too many courses or using overly sophisticated learning and progress-tracking platforms. This could introduce more overhead to your already busy employees. Opt for simplicity when designing your learning and tracking medium. Ensure that the necessary resources, such as online courses, workshops, textbooks, and software tools, are readily available and accessible to all employees at the lowest barrier to entry possible. 

Offer supporting programs alongside your path! Employees have different learning abilities, preferences, and time constraints. Offer flexibility in the learning path, allowing employees to progress at their own pace while balancing their workload and other responsibilities. Consider offering your employees learning time to help them progress quickly. Also, consider offering them adequate learning support or mentorship to overcome learning inertia and help your employees upskill themselves with momentum such as a “learning buddy” to whom they can ask questions. These buddies could be more experienced colleagues or a learning group.

Conclusion

Deploying a path to organizational AI literacy is a strategic endeavor through which we expect to see significant improvements in internal creativity and productivity, as well as technical capabilities to support our partners and customers. We see AI and modern cloud-enabled technologies as a core propellant of competitive advantage for the world's most productive organizations. We’re excited to support their evolution, aligning our internal strategy and capabilities to improve outcomes. 

Join Our Forward-Thinking Team

We aren't merely adopting GenAI, we are developing AI products and capabilities foundationally. We create an environment of perpetual learning and growth, ensuring our team is current and future-ready. Our GenAI literacy initiative is a testament to our dedication to nurturing talent and our vision for a future crafted by innovation. 

Join us as we innovate, leveraging GenAI's power to redefine the technology and business landscape.