“Getting on the AI Train”
Lots of business leaders feeling pressure to get on the “AI train” or be left at the train station. Don’t worry, because not all destinations are the same.
Always start with goals, strategies and processes – then tools come at the end. #AIROI
AI is a tool, a means to an end. AI is like any other implementation with the ROI measured. #HBR stated in a recent article that the “MIT Media Lab found that 95% of organizations see no measurable return on their investment in these (AI) technologies.”
AI as a Tool
Have you ever walked into #HomeDepot or #Lowe’s and stood in the hand-tools aisle? 🧰 So many options. A little overwhelming. But you’re not buying a tool, rather, you’re buying a solution to a job. A screwdriver isn’t the point. The job to be done is.
#AI is the same way. 🤖
There are endless ways to “use AI,” but the real question is: What job are you trying to get done? Start there. Again, consider goal, strategy, process and then…tool is the last piece! Don’t start with a #AI solution and decide how it fits. Rather start with jobs to be done, and consider #AI as part of your toolkit! #AIAnxiety #AIROI #JobsToBeDone #AItechstack
Going Botless?
Don’t feel exposed if you don’t have a #chatbot. 🤖
Back at #SE, we implemented an internal #bot that made real sense. It reduced repetitive field and plant engineering questions by surfacing answers from years of structured, well-maintained data. The result? Faster answers for field engineers and far fewer “vanilla” requests landing on plant engineers’ desks.
The key wasn’t the bot. It was the job to be done – supported by years of quality data.
Clean, well-structured data made the implementation fast, effective, and delivered clear ROI. Hats off to the teams who invested in that foundation.
If you don’t have a bot, you’re not necessarily behind. But if you aren’t thinking about how technology can impact your business and having those conversations, you do risk falling behind.
If a bot fits the job, great. If it doesn’t, that’s okay too. Find the best tool for the job. The toolbox is expansive.
#AIROI #JobsToBeDone #BestToolForTheJob
Leadership stressing over AI
#AIAnxiety – don’t be anxious, be curious…be AI conversant.
Start here: McKinsey & Company study – State of AI in 2025, and their key findings:
• Most organizations are still in the experimentation or piloting phase: Nearly 2/3 of respondents say their organizations have not yet begun scaling AI across the enterprise.
• High curiosity in AI agents: 62% of survey respondents say their organizations are at least experimenting with AI agents.
• Positive leading indicators on impact of AI: Respondents report use-case-level cost and revenue benefits, and 64% say that AI is enabling their innovation. However, just 39% report EBIT impact at the enterprise level.
• High performers use AI to drive growth, innovation, and cost: 80% of respondents say their companies set efficiency as an objective of their AI initiatives, but the companies seeing the most value from AI often set growth or innovation as additional objectives.
• Redesigning workflows is a key success factor: 50% of those AI high performers intend to use AI to transform their businesses, and most are redesigning workflows.
• Differing perspectives on employment impact: Respondents vary in their expectations of AI’s impact on the overall workforce size of their organizations in the coming year: 32% expect decreases, 43% no change, and 13% increases.
Premature AI
Case in point ->> pushing something out before validating and securing confidence in the solution and ROI can create a costly rollback.
” Companies that leaned into AI this year – and cut staff along the way – will start bringing some of those same employees back after realizing certain work still needs a human touch.” – Big Ideas 26, LinkedIn News
#Boomerang talent can help fix things, but it is very expensive and may not be the best “messaging.”
Job Security and AI
#AIAnxiety
It’s been reported in a Fortune article that 79% of U.S. CEOs fear losing their jobs if they do not deliver measurable AI-driven business results within 2 years. Survey by Harris Poll for Dataiku.
Key Takeaways from the Survey:
• Job Security Tied to AI: 79% of CEOs in the U.S. (and 74% globally) expressed concern over job security if they fail to show tangible AI-driven gains in their companies.
• AI vs. Human Executives: The survey also revealed that a surprising 89% of CEOs believe AI could develop a better strategic plan than a member of their executive leadership team.
• Fear of Inaction: Often said is the biggest risk is not the AI itself, but rather the failure to adapt and integrate the technology into business strategy.
AI vulnerabilities
#AI “possibilities” can be powerful, for bad actors as well.
Embracing change and the unknown while ensuring security can be its own challenge.
An @IcaroLabs study discovered that reformulating harmful requests as poetry can trick AI models into producing dangerous content, with some systems falling for the technique every single time.
The details:
• Poetry verses achieved a 62% average jailbreak success rate
• Gemini 2.5 Pro was most vulnerable at 100%
• Poetry unlocked dangerous responses on topics including weapons development, hacking, and psychological manipulation.
Why it matters:
– #AIsafety has become a whack-a-mole game, with poetry now joining roleplay scenarios, foreign language tricks, and encoding exploits on the growing list of unexpected vulnerabilities.
– Each patch seems to invite a new creative workaround – and there’s no finish line for a problem that is only going to get more advanced.
Read more here: https://lnkd.in/e7PpC6DE
AI Immersion
Companies can embrace #AI with immersion. How would that look?
• leadership townhalls discussing AI and impacts to the business
• employee AI training programs
• departmental AI building competition
But, how does it land? -> Giving employees space, permission, tools, time to explore and encouraged to do so, will they innovate and be empowered?
#AI could be part of the #Lean playbook, but further reaching considering tools, data, orchestration, governance, and more. Ensuring IT is dialed in, especially at the use case development seems to be a good collaboration starting point.
• AI is proactive, predictive and prescriptive
• AI is highly-scalable
• AI is data-rich, pattern-detecting, enhancing
• AI is the “how” that supports the Lean “what”
#Agile methodologies support structure, oversight, prioritization. Connecting the dots of possibility and execution.
Perhaps it’s time for an #AISherpa – a guide that helps front office freely envision a new state, of course with AI, and yet, be able to ensure the critical back-end structure, governance and oversight is jointly guided.
Do you want everyone “building something”? Maybe. Maybe not.
Keep in mind, by “everyone gets to build” it can introduce #AIslop, rather #AgentSlop. When it reaches slop-level, isn’t it just another form of #technicaldebt ?! No one wants that, and if you’ve ever decommissioned applications (🙋🏼♀️), it’s very costly and oftentimes hard to extricate.
If you’re ready to move forward with AI, it’s a “super tool” with “super abilities.” “With great power comes great responsibility.”
Gauging who, when, where, why and how that #AIsuperpower is wielded ultimately lies with leadership. And no two organizations are the same. What works for one may not work for another, and business processes even in the same industry can greatly vary.
One area that should be discussed in the same breadth with AI is company #culture. AI often brings a new state of fluidness, connectedness, empowerment, transparency, communication, control, skill needs and more… so how does your culture mesh?
As P. Drucker said “Culture eats Strategy for breakfast.” There’s that.
Keep in mind that #data is at the core of the AI development and scaling. All the above is at the mercy of your data. What’s that mean? High-quality, clean, and consistent data is essential for building reliable and trustworthy AI applications. Poor data -> poor outcomes, including biased results and system failures.
Immersing an organization into AI, requires careful consideration, probably more profound than any other tools make available in modern times.
🗓️Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, start somewhere. Start the conversation internally, bring in your transformation change agents to support the journey, which has just begun!
Keywords: AI, AI Anxiety, AI Vulnerabilities, AI Slop, AISlop, Agent Slop, AgentSlop, Lean, AI Sherpa, AISherpa, AI ROI, AIROI, AIAnxiety, Data, Chatbot
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