The AI Transformation: Navigating the Hype and Reality (W10)

Hi everyone! This week has been an interesting journey through conversations about product teams and AI.

I've been hearing from various C-level managers and tech leaders, and cautious exploration around AI is consistent. It's not the breathless excitement we saw a few months ago but a more measured approach.

The big question seems to be: How do we integrate AI meaningfully? Most folks aren't looking to replace entire teams but to strategically enhance their capabilities. The dream of a single superhuman developer doing everything is fading—instead, people are gravitating towards smaller, more focused teams.

What's fascinating is how similar this feels to previous tech transformations. Remember when cloud computing or agile methodologies first emerged? There was resistance, skepticism, and a lot of "we've always done it this way" conversations. AI is following a similar pattern.

The expertise gap is real. While everyone's talking about AI, genuinely skilled practitioners are surprisingly rare. This reminds me of the early framework days when developers built everything from scratch instead of leveraging existing tools.

Most businesses aren't ready for full-scale internal AI experiments. It feels premature, like trying to build a custom framework when solid solutions already exist. The smart approach is selective integration, not wholesale transformation.

A few observations from the week:

• AI works best as a collaborative tool
• Smaller teams can be more effective than large, unwieldy groups
• Behaviour change is slow, especially in tech
• Strategic thinking trumps blind adoption

The most successful teams will be those who view AI as an enhancement, not a replacement. It's about augmenting human creativity, not eliminating it.

Just like previous tech waves, we'll see a normalization. The initial hype will settle, practical applications will emerge, and teams will find their rhythm.

Br,

Sam