Why Isn’t AI Improving My Team’s Productivity?
Usually because the tools came before the process. Business operations consultant Emily Hatton told BrightKeel founder Alex Bacon that founders often end up “chucking a few tools over to the team” without looking at the process the tool is meant to improve, “and therefore nothing really changes.” Her advice is to look “process first”: decide what you’re trying to achieve, such as reducing time per output or getting more clients into each team member, redesign the workflow around it, then measure whether it worked.
How Should a Business Start With AI Adoption?
Start by knowing where you are now. Alex Bacon, founder of BrightKeel, maps businesses against his AI maturity model. Leadership buy-in sits at the base, because “that’s what everything else is built on.” Next is experimentation, where most organisations are: using ChatGPT or Copilot, but not in “a structured, strategic, consistent way.” Then come strategy, governance, guidelines, training and data. And before any of it, get your existing foundations right, because “all AI does is amplify what is there.”
What Should Be Included in an AI Policy?
Before going any further with AI. Dr Ben Thompson’s first question to any business is whether it has an AI policy, and if it doesn’t, to stop and write one. The longer you wait, the harder it is to put rules around what people are already doing, including tools they use without telling anyone. It doesn’t need to be long. A one-page policy can cover your objectives, approved and banned tools, how data is handled, where a human checks the output, and how people raise problems without blame.
How Do You Get Employees to Use Microsoft Copilot?
Make it relevant to each role, and build a community around it. Hannah Adams, who spent eight years at ASOS, told BrightKeel founder Alex Bacon that a leader-first Copilot rollout struggled because “the leaders are pretty busy.” Adoption improved through a collective of enthusiasts from across the business, PA and EA advocates who influenced their leaders, Copilot training for every new starter, and use cases built from a learning needs analysis. Her mantra: “Can AI help me with that?”
How Do You Use AI in Marketing to Save Time?
Build assistants around the work your team repeats most, and teach them to produce work to your standard. Nikki Laker, Marketing Director at Opus Technology, told BrightKeel founder Alex Bacon that her team’s custom GPT, “our unicorn”, finds keyword gaps, writes blogs in Opus style, adds internal links and meta, and saved “five full days worth of time” in its first month. Her mantra is doing more with less: “do less internally. But output it to a really, really high standard.”