Setting Sail with AI
How to get started and how to stay ahead of the competition.
The cost of GenAI is going to 0. The proliferation of GenAI is only speeding up. The barriers to using AI are disappearing. Microsoft and Google added it to their enterprise bundles. Meta embedded it into every application they have.
Just having GenAI is not a strategy, it’s not a defensible position. AI provides the same tailwind to everyone, so the only question is have you set sail?
1. You have to unfurl your sails
You need at least one AI tool that everyone has access to, and that is set up with enterprise grade security. AI is here and people are using it. If your company hasn’t rolled out an approved solution people are using unapproved solutions. Most tools have an enterprise version where the data you put in is locked in an environment only your business has access to and the data won’t be used for training. This should be priority #1.
2. Trim your sails quickly
Don’t just give your team access, launch your tool with a campaign. Once you’ve selected your tool and acquired licenses start your launch plan. Move along the adoption curve quickly with a few steps:
Host a town hall - introduce the new tool and what it can do. Highlight some of the features and present at least 1 working use case for your business today
Launch an innovation campaign - have a short (4-6 week) innovation campaign with prizes for the winners. Don’t just launch the campaign and see the results. Make it a group/team activity schedule office hours and check-ins and have the teams showcase their use cases and results to leadership.
Collect feedback - have weekly surveys for submissions on what people are using the tool for and problems they are having. Incorporate the feedback into trainings and newsletters. Highlight wins and inform on best practices.
Monitor and intervene - track usage metrics and address false starts or fall offs. Check in on why people stopped or didn’t start. People can be busy, have access problems, or competing priorities.
3. Keep your eyes on the horizon
AI is rapidly evolving in functionality and capabilities stay informed and adapt. Create a SWAT team of champions monitoring the horizon for new tools or best practices that can be shared to the broader team.
Tools are integrating AI everyday, new companies are creating new AI first tools. Understanding what’s available to buy can save you a lot of time building and maintaining.
4. Put out the spinnaker
Steps 1-3 will help you capture the tailwind, AI strategy is the only thing that will propel you ahead of others. There are a lot of difficult decisions you have to balance:
How many guardrails and how high should they be? How can you empower people without opening yourself up to too much risk. Make sure you have feedback channels and lean on your SWAT team to test the guardrails you put in place. AI is a jagged frontier, its capabilities are only known through testing. Make sure people have a way to test and try ideas out in a safe and controlled environment.
Should we buy, build, or wait? This might be the hardest question. I’ll lean on a quote from Margin Call “You can be the best, first, or cheat and I don’t cheat.” If you could be first, you can build or wait. I would avoid anything that OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google might build in the future. They are investing more money than you ever will be able to. Some companies invested a lot in early chat wrappers that are now obsolete with the enhancements from ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. Buy questions can be whittled down to price vs. ROI.
How will we be disrupted? Your business will be disrupted. An existing competitor using AI as a differentiator or to cut their prices. Or it could be a new company with a small team and an AI first approach. You need to choose how AI will reinvent the way your team works and your business delivers.
There are lots of decisions and choices to be made the only bad one is to not start. If you have any questions or want to talk more about AI shoot me a note or leave a comment and I’ll get in touch!