AI isn’t a strategy deck—it’s a shift in how work gets done. Here’s what most companies miss when they try to “start with AI.”
Everyone says they’re starting with AI. Most of them aren’t. They’re starting with a vendor presentation. Or a pilot that dies in procurement limbo. Or a strategy deck titled “The Future of Work 2.0″ that hasn’t been updated since April.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: The real starting point with AI isn’t a budget line. It’s a slight sense of annoyance. The spreadsheet that takes too long to clean. The 2-hour meeting that could’ve been a 5-minute summary. The feeling that if you write one more bland subject line, your soul might exit through your inbox.
And yet, most organizations overthink it.
What Everyone Thinks Starting with AI Looks Like:
- “Standing up an AI task force.” Translation: 3-month delay.
- Buying an expensive tool. Bonus points if no one knows how to use it.
- Hosting a workshop with sticky notes. Just add buzzwords and call it transformation.
- Talking about hallucinations instead of applications. A sure sign nothing’s happening.
What Starting with AI Actually Looks Like:
- Someone quietly using ChatGPT to rewrite a confusing email.
- A marketer testing 20 versions of a headline in half the time.
- A product manager automating status updates because she can’t take one more Monday stand-up.
- A team saying, “Wait, we don’t have to do this part manually anymore?”
Innovation doesn’t announce itself. It sneaks in through the side door—often disguised as someone being just lazy enough to look for a faster way.
The Biggest Mistake? Treating AI Like a Tool Instead of a Trigger.
It’s not about the tech. It’s about changing the rhythm of how work gets done. AI won’t solve your processes. But it will expose them.
If your workflow is broken, AI just makes the inefficiencies louder. If your culture rewards looking busy over being smart, AI won’t help—it’ll be treated like a threat, not a lever.
So How Should You Start?
Not with a pilot. Not with permission. Definitely not with a 3-year roadmap.
Start with this:
1. Identify the daily grind.
Where are people wasting time, copying and pasting, reinventing the wheel?
2. Let the rebels go rogue.
Give your most curious, resourceful employees a green light to test, break, and rebuild their own workflows using off-the-shelf tools. No red tape. No approval chain.
3. Measure what actually saves time.
Don’t track “AI adoption.” Track reclaimed hours, reduced rework, faster decision-making.
4. Scale what sticks.
When something quietly improves a team’s output, that’s when it’s ready to grow—without needing a brand campaign or an “AI Champion” badge.
Bonus nuance: This grassroots, “go rogue” approach only works if your organization has some tolerance for experimentation. In environments where mistakes are punished or risk is taboo, even small AI experiments feel like walking a tightrope over a pit of sharks. But where people feel psychologically safe to try, fail, and iterate, this organic adoption spreads fast—and with far less fanfare than any official rollout.
Bottom Line:
If you’re waiting for budget, you’re already behind. If you’re waiting for certainty, you’ll be watching everyone else leapfrog you.
The smartest move? Don’t launch a strategy deck. Launch a real-time chat channel—like Slack or Microsoft Teams—where people can experiment and share. Let the questions flood in. Let the weird hacks surface. Let curiosity drive the bus for once.
Because the truth is: AI won’t replace your team. But someone on your team who knows how to use AI… just might.
Leave a comment