The AI Paradox: To Go Big, Start Small

Transforming Your Organization, One Workflow at a Time

When it comes to AI and its implications for your organization,

You'll hear bold, contradictory claims —

"It's all hype; don't get distracted," or "This is the most important technology, maybe ever."

Radical naysaying, dystopian fear-mongering, and utopian prophecies are equally useless – in all cases, the logical answer to the question of, "What now?" is to do nothing.

The truth is, if things go right, you should expect to use AI to reclaim up to 50% of your and your employees’ time and energy.

However, this requires you to take the proper path to organizational adoption, and, when it comes to integrating the technology, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.

You'll get the best results when the technology is fitted to each individual's workflow, even across individual contributors within a given function.

The good news is you don't need to figure this out yourself; instead, you can make it easy for your employees to do so by arming them with general-purpose state-of-the-art tools (almost all of which are available for use in enterprise settings) and encouraging rapid experimentation and sharing of best practices.

Once you start finding a nice fit between the pairs of hands on your team and these AI tools, this then raises the question, “What should be done with all that surplus time and attention?”

First, consider that freed-up attention and energy as a newfound capital asset, and think deeply about how you should be putting it to work by pursuing new opportunities at the frontier of your business (if not your entire industry).

Second, confidently address what are sure to be growing demands from employees, your board, and your investors to come up with an answer to the question, “What are you doing with AI?”: Assure them that you're taking an approach of right-sized steps (that generate actionable, experimental data) towards a grander organization-wide transformation.

Third, pair those individuals who are intrinsically motivated to push the technology to its limits with an outside AI expert who can help them elevate their nascent “AI craft”: how to efficiently delegate to machines, rapidly conduct small-scale experiments that generate insights about the ways in which the technology works and does not, codify processes, and continuously share best practices (and “artisanal software” applications) that increase productivity and lead to adoption, even among more conservative colleagues.

Finally, when you're ready, you should convene a cross-functional team of AI-enhanced frontiersmen and -women to take on an ambitious but highly uncertain initiative that has the potential to take your company to the next level (e.g., hitting your 1-year sales target in just three months).

With proper AI use, what was previously possible to accomplish in days or weeks may now, in many cases, be done in minutes, and so the scope of your ambitions should expand accordingly.

Finally, it's ultimately up to you to cast a compelling vision and unify the company, now armed with these newfound capabilities that allow everyone to move further faster than has ever been possible before.

I help private and public sector leaders accomplish the above at lightning speed.

When you're ready to get started, send me a DM (or an email: [email protected]).