How Should a Business Start With AI Adoption?

Alex: It is been a busy few weeks. I've run workshops with a few different companies recently, individual one-to-ones with businesses, but I've also run an AI workshop on a retreat with quite a few founders. And I've been on a couple of panels recently as well. So a lot going on, which is great.

And really it's all around helping businesses get started with, using AI and using that strategically and driving the adoption within their business. So today's episode, I'm gonna be looking at some of the most common questions that I've been asked over the last few weeks, and I'll go through those as a q and a bit of a different episode because it's my first solo episode that I'm doing.

As I mentioned before, I'm in between series really at the moment, so we're just about to start series two, where I'm lining up more guests at the moment that's gonna very much be focused on use cases and looking at particular industries and particular functions within organisations to really understand how they're using AI for those different departments.

So it should be much more relevant to individuals and help us to really go deeper, as people, as people progress through their AI journey.

So one of the most common questions I get, which is really why people engage with me in the first place, is knowing where to start with AI. And as much as it's a cliche, one of the things that I worked through is before, knowing where to start is actually knowing where you are and then looking at, well, what's the next logical steps from there?

One of the things I walk through is the AI maturity model, or the AI maturity pyramid. And that looks at, or I work with organisations to map where they are on that, on that pyramid and where they are on that journey. One of the interesting things there is the top of the pyramid is very much an AI, fully automated organisation where you've got different agents, different automations, all running autonomously together.

And that's where a lot of the headlines are, and I think that's also where a lot of the overwhelm comes. Reality is not many businesses are there. I don't know any, I don't, I haven't worked with any businesses that are in that space. It's often what makes the headlines, but I think reality is, we're quite away from that at the moment.

But that's where people often see in terms of headlines and where they think they want to or need to be, and it feels overwhelming. It feels out of reach. So actually walking through those steps of the pyramid, and the foundational layer is all around. Leadership buy-in. And that might not necessarily be the first place that everyone starts.

But the reason I've got it at the bottom of the pyramid is because that's what everything else is built on. Leadership need to be bought into AI. They need to have a vision for what AI looks like in their organisation. They need to know why they're bringing it in. And they need to start to want to understand how to drive adoption and enablement in their organisation.

The next level up is experimentation. And this is really where a lot of organisations are. So they've probably got ChatGPT or Copilot licences, or if they're smaller or they've got particularly, advanced individuals, they may be looking at Claude. So they're using it, but they're not necessarily using it a and a structured, strategic, consistent way.

So they may be starting to prompt, they may even be starting to build out the odd agent, but it's not done strategically. And part of what I go through is helping them understand those next steps in terms of understanding the use cases, understanding, how they're going to use it consistently, and how they're gonna build out real solutions.

And then of course, working through things that are probably come onto, in more detail later, but looking at the strategy the governance the guidelines the training, for individuals in their organisation, and then also looking at data. And we've spoken before on this show about how important data is, and it's often the area that people, come unstuck to really be able to drive, automation and agents as if the knowledge and the data isn't available in their organisation.

One of the questions I got asked, on the panel recently was, if there's a skills gap preventing people from getting started. And there absolutely is. And I think that's sort of in two camps or two parts really. So one is the literal technical skills needed to use the tools. So people do need training.

People do need time to get familiar with the tools. But actually once you start using them, they're fairly intuitive. And they're fairly similar. So really that kind of first barrier is the mindset and people having the confidence to get started having the habit and really knowing how and where to use it, and being able to identify those opportunities that they can use it.

And a lot of that comes actually at the leadership level, from not knowing enough about what they want to use AI for and setting the direction for organisations. Of their vision of how AI is gonna be used within the organisation, what they're comfortable using it for and what they're not. And where they actively want to people to be using AI, and where they're not.

And if you're leaving it to chance, then that's where you really end up with, disparate use where you'll have some advanced, enthusiastic users racing ahead. Possibly even using shadow AI again, that we've spoken about on the podcast before, where organ or where people in organisations are using, their own AI, perhaps on their phone or on their own laptop, that the organisation isn't aware of and they don't know how individuals are using them.

They dunno what they're using it for. They dunno what data they're putting into it. So that skills gap is very much, one that is overcome by the leadership, by creating the right culture for people to go in and practise, to experiment, to get things wrong, and to give them the training so they're able to know how to use the tools, how they're able to think in workflows, how they're able to identify how and where AI would be used in their day to day business.

And only by doing this can you start to create that culture for people to feel comfortable using it, to identify the champions within the organisation that can go on and support others. Within that, AI is different. AI is all around that. Continual learning, continual iteration. The tools are evolving all of the time. Your ability to interact with it, your ability to prompt it, your ability to build agents, your ability to give the right context the right knowledge the right information, all of that will.

Develop and grow and evolve over time. And your AI models will grow and learn and evolve over time. So it's very much a moving beast, in a good way. But that again is part of that gap in terms of, perception and confidence and knowledge to interact with the tools.

One of the most common areas and questions I get asked about is the role of the leader. I work typically with business leaders, managing directors the leadership teams, on enabling AI within their organisation, creating the right culture, creating strategy, creating direction for the organisation.

So one of those questions is what's the role of the leader and what do we need to have in place? And the absolute first thing is your existing foundations. So obviously this will vary from department to department and business to business, but those things that you need as an organisation, like strategy, like clarity on your value proposition, clarity on who your ideal customer is, clarity on your brand and your tone of voice, clarity on how you want to use data, clarity on the business strategy, all of those foundational fundamental things that you need as a business anyway, you need for AI, because all AI does is amplify what is there and without the users, your teams, knowing those things, even if you think you've got a strategy, if your team don't know it and it isn't really ingrained in your business as a business direction and as a brand personality and a brand tone of voice, for example, then you get a lot of amplification of confusion and noise.

So the first part start is making sure those existing things are in place. Then you need to think about the role of leadership. So being clear on why you're using AI in the first place, being clear on the guardrails as you scale, knowing what you want. Um, Be clear on your guardrails of how people are going to use AI in the organisation, what your expectations are, what they should and shouldn't use it for. And ultimately that forms part of your AI policy, And it's important to really think about what you want to give them in terms of guidance there, of data, of usage, where it's important, where it's important to still have humans in the loop. And also as I mentioned earlier the role of the leader is very much around, providing that culture for adoption and enablement, making sure people, are able to learn, are able to experiment, and are able to, iterate and improve.

Another one that came upon a panel recently was whether I'm seeing, businesses already replacing people with AI. And the honest answer is not really. Yes, I'm, I'm hearing a lot about it in the, in the news and the headlines, just like everyone else, but reality of the businesses I'm working with, it's, it's not actually there yet.

And I think that's for several reasons. I think that's partly because the types of organisations I work with are fairly early on in their journey. And they're still understand, they're still trying to understand and establish, what role AI plays, but also a lot are genuinely looking to use it to enhance what they've got there already.

Enable their existing teams, enhance the services that they can offer, remove some of the mundane the repetitive tasks. But that doesn't mean removing the people. That just means freeing the people up to do more strategic, more valuable things. And that sort of sounds a bit like a cliche, but that's what I'm hearing and that's what I'm seeing, from most of the organisations that I'm working with.

And the other reality is that I don't think many businesses, are actually ready to, even if they wanted to, automate some job roles or not hire in, if they don't have some of those foundational things I spoke about, if they don't have the data in place, if they're not already, got their processes cleanly mapped out and understood where AI fits and where a human fits and what that means, that's mapped to the strategy of the organisation.

Again, one of the examples I quite often use is. The appetite for using AI will vary from organisation to organisation and how it's used. So if one organisation says, customer service is really important to us, for some organisations that will mean therefore they want to respond really quickly, give high volume of customers, answer and ability to get an answer really quickly.

So they might look at using AI for that. For another organisation, that mean might mean that it needs to be completely human led and AI plays a role in the background. But without having that clarity of where you actually want AI and where you want people, to sit and to the role to play in your organisation, then you're not ready to start replacing people anyway.

And this touches on another question that that comes up quite a lot, which is how do you use, Which is, how do you talk about using AI to the organisation without unsettling or undermining trust? And I think again, it comes back to, first of all, knowing the answers to some of the questions that you're gonna get asked. Like, what, why are we using AI in our business? What do we want to use it for?

What can and can't we use it for? And by going through some of those processes I spoke about, and that's typically what I do and I'm I'm working with organisations, is help 'em get clarity on these things so they're able to communicate it. So the first thing is knowing that, and then, you'll actually know why you're bringing AI in the first place.

And that might be for efficiency, but that might be for, delivering new services. That might be for enabling the team the existing team. So when you know that you can be clear and you can be open, you can be honest, and that's the first thing. And helping to reassure them on why you're using AI to, and what it's gonna mean for them and what it's gonna mean for their role, bring them very much on that journey.

Be open and be clear. As leaders, this is the first time, leaders have navigated this change. And, and it's a big change in for the business and for the industries that people are in. And, and we're all learning it. It's new. And it's not something that as leaders you've navigated before. And I think be open and be, vulnerable about that to your team and get their inputs, get their thoughts on what they think they need in terms of training.

Make it part of your. Performance developments and your ongoing reviews. Make sure they've got access to that training. Make sure that the leadership team are able to talk to their teams about their requirements and their needs. Make sure you identify those champions and make sure you listen to their concerns.

I'm working with one organisation recently, who have a lot of people who are concerned about the environmental impact. So listen to that. Think about how you can minimise that impact and how you can be considerate to those concerns. And that doesn't mean not using AI, that just maybe means being stricter about where it is and isn't used, and thinking about how if they're able to use the tool properly and you're able to build out agents, for consistent prompting and consistent outputs, then it's gonna be more efficient.

And ultimately, if they're using that to more efficiently deliver, their organisation's, mission, then that in itself is delivering good.

Another one that comes up quite a bit is, about the timing. Should, should we wait for the technology to mature? And the honest answer is no. The tools are already brilliant. They're already hugely powerful. The speed at which they're evolving, by the time you've started, and caught up, it'll have have moved forward.

So you don't need to wait until it's, wait until it's there. Because it's only going in one direction. And actually, I think starting with some of those more foundational things, like good prompting, like understanding workflows, in some respects the way the technology's evolved, is becoming less relevant.

But actually you can't, going back to my maturity pyramid model, you can't just jump to levels three or level four. Actually. By working through those and having the right mindset and understanding how the tools work and understanding what that means for your business, you are able to get much more out of it.

So by the time you go through those and you move people along in your organisation through those foundational steps the technology will just continue to improve alongside you doing that as well. But there is absolutely no reason to wait. The technology is great already. As long as you know how to use it, as long as you know when and how, you are more vulnerable in terms of hallucinations and you know how to look out for those and how to test for those, and you are confident about when a human should be in the loop, then absolutely should be cracking on.

And asking, I do get asked quite a lot. What's the one thing as a business owner or leader I should be doing? And obviously there's a lot because we've just covered a lot in those questions. My main message is that this is a change management opportunity. It's not an IT project. Absolutely. It involves technology, and the IT team need to be involved without doubt.

But it's very much a way of working. It's about people. It's about people change, and often use the analogy of the dawn of the internet, where as an organisation that completely transforms how you go to market, whether you are an e-commerce business or not, whether you have customer portals, whether you have, Whether you have partner portals, whether you have hybrid working in your organisation, how you communicate what your customer service is like online. All of those things are business decisions because they're determined by the business strategy, by the brand, by the customer experience, all of those elements.

And AI is very much the same that let's say technology and the IT team need to be involved, but you as a leader need to really answer those tough questions about what it means for your business and your organisation.

But if you want to go deeper on any of the points that I've raised, then then do get in touch. I'm very active on LinkedIn or you can find me, at BrightKeel.AI.

And as I mentioned before, we are in between series at the moment. So there might be a, I dunno. So as I mentioned before, we are in between series at the moment, but series two of the podcast will be coming out in the next few weeks. And I'm currently lining up guests and if you wanna be on the podcast or you know, someone who, has an interesting point of view whether they've used AI, that much or not, if they, even if they haven't, it would be really interesting to dive into to why and what those challenges are.

And I'm happy to work with them on the podcast to overcome some of those. But if you or someone you know, would be good on the podcast, then please do get in touch.