You don't need an AI strategy

I know, it goes against everything we read from consultants, executives, advisors and product companies. But they miss what it means to work inside an organization that makes investments based on outcomes & impact and not the shiny factor of new features.

Now, don't mistake not needing an AI strategy with not needing AI. There are many interesting and exciting tools coming to market to improve efficiency of marketing content creation, improve an employee's ability to write a succinct email or to analyze customer support requests and prioritize them based on customer impact. But none of those wins will come from an AI strategy, they will come from the respective strategies of your marketing, sales growth, customer zero and customer support teams.

Simply put, an AI Strategy that stands alone from our corporate objectives & parallel to our existing inventory of technology roadmaps, strategies, vendor evaluations and R&D activities has no chance of realizing the potential value AI brings. Adoption of AI capabilities must come as part of your core initiatives including;

• Migrating to SaaS business systems to reduce operational cost and increase velocity.
• Decreasing tech debt to lower operational overhead and accelerate development of new capabilities.
• Simplify integrations to increase data accuracy and process automation coverage, reducing manual exceptions that are expensive to handle.
• Reducing duplicative technologies to minimize integrations and steps for data movement.

Rather than developing an AI Strategy, think about how your organization can;

• Empower your Product Managers with knowledge, investment capacity and air-cover to implement AI as part of larger initiatives that build new capabilities for enterprise business users.
• Educate Solution Architects on the capabilities available in the market and the long term business needs so they can identify areas where AI can be injected into already funding programs with defined OKRs. Ensure they have time for research, event attendance, vendor conversations and community forums.
• Train Business Analysts to leverage tools on the market, experiment with them and begin to build automation where they find quick wins.

Focus your energies on building competency in every product manager, business analyst, functional lead, solution architect and leader across your organization. Enable them to determine the best places to apply AI in the context of their business function and the value chain they represent.

Quick recap; you don't need an AI strategy. You need a corporate strategy for key business functions that factors in modern technology, industry trends, company differentiation, weighted against risk and timelines measured against positive impacts of automation, scale & recommendations. You need a tolerance for risk backed by knowledgeable folks about capabilities that can be applied to business objectives. You need people that are educated in the available technologies and their tradeoffs to ensure that AI is part of the linking & enablement between corporate strategy and execution.

Thank you https://richferguson.com/product/a-i-magic-app/ for the great graphic. #notanendorsement