You’re flooded with the AI hype — “AI Escapes from sandbox!”, “Layoffs are coming!”, “Buy this chatbot!” — I get it. By the same token, you need to figure out exactly how it is affecting your own industry.
Having navigated multiple tech companies from 2 to 2,000 employees for the past 15 years, I have an approach that will help make your business more competitive and mitigate risk through the years to come with the real impacts from AI that are inevitable.
I want to give you a concise framework on navigating the changes happening right now. It’s new, it’s concerning, it’s overwhelming, it’s annoying. Let’s cut through the BS and get down to what you can actually do.
00A caveat before we start
Businesses are struggling to successfully implement AI, it’s no secret.
As with anything in business, there are both risks and returns associated with change. Databases have been deleted by AIs, cybersecurity holes have been introduced, teams have reported AI is not helping, and the speculators talk about mass layoffs.
We’re in the beginning stages of businesses crawling before they can walk when it comes to using AI. Change management does not happen overnight. It’s a continuous process.
Fortunately for us, there are already a lot of mistakes to learn from. Security practices, data handling, AI permissions, human reviews, and reskilling. I’m convinced that there’s no going back and now, the only way is forward.
Now it’s time for the framework.
01Find an expert instead of going it alone
I’m not going to beat around the bush on this one. Is it a plug? Sure, but it’s honestly the most high leverage thing you can do, so I’m putting it first, no matter how sales-driven it might seem. Let me explain, then we’ll jump right into the framework.
When your oven breaks, do you search the internet for YouTube videos and use ChatGPT to fix it yourself? Probably not.
When your windows need to be replaced after 30 years, do you assemble your own team, learn all of the potential mistakes, and install the windows yourself? Unless you specialize in general contracting, of course not.
You wouldn’t install a new water heater in your house. So, with the countless items demanding your attention, should you really be spending the time learning all of the technical details around AI, or expecting to have the expertise to vet a “developer” who’s been vibe coding for 1.5 years? Almost certainly not. The game of business is about delegation and leverage — use it.
The game of business is about delegation and leverage — use it.
On expertise, §1
02Find every process in your company that can be automated
Survey your entire staff on how they spend their hours. What are they doing manually? What must be done manually? What can be automated? These are not the questions you ask them, these are the outcomes you’re looking for.
In professional services like accounting and law, along with most other businesses, there are countless hours being spent where either AI or automation will suffice.
- Are they manually entering data into Excel or Google Sheets?
- Are they taking call notes manually?
- Are they asking clients the same questions multiple times?
- Are they manually tracking leads in your sales funnel?
- Are they hand-building reports that can be generated?
- Do your engagement letters or client communications address how the firm uses AI?
- What are the outcomes each employee is responsible for?
- Are they uploading client information into ChatGPT?
- Are they hand writing each invoice?
Building a full map of your business is possible. It takes time and expertise, but it’s an essential piece of having a true action plan when it comes to how to continue to compete in your industry during this age of AI and automation.
03Carefully analyze and understand the productivity gaps
When you aggregate all of the information from every employee and every process in your company, you can see with clear eyes. You use this data, gathered from your firm uniquely, to weigh your processes against available tools in the market.
AI has real limitations. The hype will try to convince you that everything can be done and it’s not long before you’ll be able to fire everyone and run your business on autopilot. For 99.9% of businesses, this is not the case.
However, you can find hundreds of hours of lost and monotonous time.
A key point of clarity is understanding what AI cannot currently do, while weighing where it’s going in the near future. The models are getting more powerful each month, but many businesses aren’t up to date with the latest capabilities.
There are tools across your entire business from marketing to sales, from admin to operations, from client intake to customer support. While there are tools for each part of your business, that does not mean employees become unnecessary. Ultimately, they will become managers of AI tools and agents.
Your job is to strategically position your business so that it stays viable into the future as the “cost of intelligence” goes down.
04Build a roadmap while weighing the effort and impact
After taking the bottom up, data driven approach and analyzing different initiative feasibility, prioritization is what counts. What’s worth doing? What comes first? What does this initiative rely on before starting it?
RICE stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. This model lets you see a data driven approach to prioritization.
- Reach: How many clients, customers, employees, vendors, etc. are impacted?
- Impact: How much improvement will this effort yield once completed?
- Confidence: How certain are we that our estimates are accurate about this initiative?
- Effort: How many resources will this initiative require to complete?
Dependency mapping is another key part of knowing what to do and when. It’s common for organizations to start a project and then 2 months later realize, “Oh… We actually needed XYZ before doing this, and that’s going to take another 3 months.”
If you don’t do the dependency map, or you aren’t able to see around the technology corners required, initiatives will be stalled or even killed having already consumed tons of resources. See §1.
05Decide and implement
The path of least resistance is to set it and forget it. This must be resisted.
There might be unnecessary hype around AI, but the truth is that AI is revolutionizing every business process and your industry is certainly being impacted.
With every major tech change, there are winners and losers. Right now, it’s simple. Those who adopt AI (and do it well enough to provide great value) will win, and those who don’t will end up closing shop because they couldn’t keep up with the resource efficiency of other businesses.
With every major tech change, there are winners and losers.
On urgency, §5
After digging through the processes, analyzing the feasibility, and prioritizing initiatives, the decision must be made to triage the initiatives starting with the most important.
06Manage the changes
The larger organizations are, the more inertia and momentum shape employee behavior.
They will always revert to doing what they were doing before. Traditionally this has been the hardest part, depending on how naturally flexible teams are.
Changes must be required and enforced. Staff must be properly educated on new workflows. They need to be encouraged when they are nervous about a new system. Their questions need to be anticipated and answered before they are asked, and after they forget. They need to be sold on the idea and not discouraged thinking they will lose their job. If some positions do become obsolete and you can’t justify reskilling some individuals, the bandaid needs to be ripped off carefully enough so that it doesn’t affect the morale of the rest of your organization.
Fortunately, modern systems are becoming much easier to use because AI is reducing the number of buttons they need to click. Whereas in the .com boom or in the advent of enterprise SaaS, there was an entire change in how they worked. Now everyone is used to software and uses some chat AI. What is being managed now is the visibility into what happens autonomously, and directing AI in-line with human judgement.
As long as the changes are taken bit by bit in manageable pieces, your team will be able to adapt and ultimately end up happier with their work because the monotony is reduced.
07Last, proceed quickly and responsibly
All of this does go back to §1. If you have a trusted partner in adapting to AI usage, it’s like having a guide with a flashlight in a dark cave. They will not only show you where the corners are, but also tell you what’s around the corner so that your firm can be prepared.
There’s no question — other companies in your industry are adopting AI and automation. The ones who do will win, the ones who don’t will lose. I’m not shy in being blunt about this because I don’t want you to be blindsided.
If you’ve made it this far, I want to help you understand the landscape and your own firm’s positioning with respect to AI and automation. Book 20 minutes with me. I will ask you a number of questions and we can determine if moving forward together is a good fit. If we are, then great. If not, then at least you will walk away with a number of key questions to reflect on.