Strategic Fit and AI: Why Racing to Implement AI Could Be Your Biggest Business Mistake

Voice Trancript from Stephen Fahey talking to claude..........

"Okay. So it's really about the resources you have and how you use them in your business strategy. And the more important question, the wider industry too. Sometimes when we talk about context of AI and strategic fit: Have you really got the need to use AI in your business? Because some people think, and this is where we go wrong with the AI gold rush, is that because AI has been strong for the last 2 years, and it's evident across social media and lots of people like myself writing articles, that you need to jump on AI and do something about it and put it into your business somehow. Okay? This is a big mistake. Because there are 2 problems in this.

Before going to the problems, let me just talk about what strategic fit is in a short definition. It's basically assessing if you've got enough resources in the market that you're serving. And there are many different definitions of strategic fit, but I prefer the one I've just given you because it's simple and easy to understand.?

So it's like I've got a car. I want to put it on, say, you know, you're watching a good film like, I don't know, Days of Thunder, okay. Then the car's on the Daytona race track or, you know, stock car racing are designed to run at the same speed. The drivers are going to be competing with their driving skills. And that's really what we're talking about when we're talking about strategic fit. Are your skills good enough in AI to mold something that's going to be useful enough for you?

This is really important because if we don't have a normal strategic fit within our industry, so forget about AI for a moment, if you go back to the car analogy, if your car isn't functioning properly, it's not got the right wheels, the pressure's not right, there's too much oil, and there's an oil leak, then it's not going to get anywhere on the track. So this is important. Because we need to really make an assessment, and some people or industries call this an audit.

So you might look at your business strategy, and it's not really a popular term, but there are so many things happening within our business that we don't really, you know, stop and look and take a survey, right? Do we really need AI in our business? And there are lots of articles out there to suggest that, for instance, if companies don't leverage AI, they're going to lose business. They're going to fall out of the market. That's not always true.

You have to play into the strengths of your business the way that you're operating. Sometimes you're going to make a real pivot and you have to employ new AI staff, for instance, that are knowledgeable enough to help you, or employ and recruit someone like me, a thought leader that might advise you on different ways you can leverage AI. But my first recommendation before you do all of that, okay, sit down with your team, or if you're a startup, just do it yourself or even talk to AI, and assess really where you're going in terms of the business itself. So what's the strength where it is at the moment? Maybe you produce a SWOT analysis. I do recommend that. That's a really quick and easy way to really think about your business. It only needs to be an hour or half an hour or so, 1 sheet of paper, or if you want to feed it through into the AI model itself, GPT-4 for instance, or Claude, whatever model you're using, and then it may suggest different things. But it is important that you do try to do some of the tasks yourself. Own recognition or your self-evaluation, your own skills, so you're not really pumping information to AI just yet.

So, there's quite a lot of information in there, but when we talk about strategic fit, it's the normal version first. You're assessing your own business first. Do a SWOT analysis. And then look at the worth of AI in your business. Now you can run it through to GPT-4 if you wish. Or you can bring someone in your team. But we do need to understand the basics of what AI is and what companies you may approach, and that's a long job list. Break things down, develop your team, assign someone as a project manager, you know, or a sub-team leader for instance, because in order for more medium-sized businesses and small businesses to develop AI in their business, if it's needed from a SWOT analysis, if there's an opportunity to be made, okay, from a weakness that's been identified, then it is important that these procedures are carried out.

Now the case study is simple. You create the case study because everybody is using AI to some degree. Not everybody, but a lot of people in the business world. And you have to figure out what the best pathway is for you. So it's like, okay, I want to become a dentist, what is the best pathway for me? What can I afford? Where is the funding? And that's very similar when we look about trying to align artificial intelligence with our own strategic fit. It's all going to fit in place from the upstairs point of view. Because if you're not looking at everything, and you're not looking at the wider industry, then the chances are that you won't gain the competitive advantages that you really want to achieve.

So remember, strategic fit is basically assessing what resources you have, have you got enough, where are they coming from, in the market that you operate in? And the best way to audit that is a SWOT analysis or just outsource it all to a company. My advice, the strength comes from within. Do your internal audit first. Then look at the technology of AI. Then you might start figuring out which companies you want to approach. Or are you going to consult? Or are you going to devise and think yourself? And sometimes, it's just a case of working with AI yourself.

I talk to Claude every day about different things in my business, my personal finance, my business finance. I mean, it helps create my own, you know, even further emotional intelligence because I'm able to, you know, the cognitive load as it were, is offloaded. It's in a higher state. So because we've got so many tasks to do, we need the machine or AI to help us remember things and structure things. And I think that's going to help a lot of companies when we talk about strategic fit."