How to Get a Firm Grip on AI For Your Business and Keep It

AI is evolving at mind-boggling speed.

How can you ensure to keep up as a CEO, Director or Business Owner?

And how do you ensure to cut through the noise and focus on the signals that can make your company leap forward?

Here's a simple principle, that can help you to get that:

Approach AI strategically

What does it mean to approach AI strategically?

Given the fact that AI is so new and such a hype, it's not easy to stay strategic.

Approaching AI strategically means that you deliberately focus on refraining from the hype.

It means that you come from a sober, clear-headed perspective, seeing AI for what it is:

A means to an end, and not the means itself.

So approaching AI strategically means focusing on the end!

Looking at your business, the value creation, the structure, the team, the processes.

And THEN looking at AI as a possible way of improvement within this system.

That's a 180 degree perspective change from FIRST looking at all the AI news and feeling the urge and fear of missing out accompanied by it.

This is counterproductive as it tends to lead to confusion and inefficient muddling.

But when you FIRST stay with for business and THEN look at AI, you have a great starting position to USE AI effectively for growth.

You can visualize this in a handy matrix:

AI Openness: Your openness and active interest in AI developments

AI Order: Are you looking at AI and asking how you can implement it (First Order)? Or do you look at your business and ask where does AI add the highest value (Second Order)?

High Openness / First Order - Leave this to the upcoming disruptors

Low Openness / First Order - You only look around, but don't implement. Avoid at any cost, you'd spend your time better if you'd go fishing.

High Openness / Second Order - You put your business first and look at AI as an enhancement. If you have a running business, this is where I suggest you'd spend your time.

Low Openness / Low Order - You neither care for AI developments nor do you look at them in relation to your business. If you're a carpenter, you might be on relatively safe ground.

How does this help you?

By staying from a strategic perspective, you stay calm, prioritized, and have the biggest chances to grow your business effectively.

Calm: Coming from your business anchors you in what you know best. Coming from the wave of possibilities and THEN trying to match it to your business, adds to confusion and fear.

Prioritized: If you start with your business system and the areas of highest value creation, you ensure to prioritize your energy the right way. This maximizes your chances to make the biggest leaps forward with your business using AI. On the other hand, if you focus on all developments first and THEN try to fit them in with your business, chances are that you add to a part of your business that doesn't propel you forward, or could even stall progress.

For example, if your current biggest bottleneck was in sales, but you start focusing on a client-support agent project, just because someone in your company has learned about a handy new tool, this could BIND critical resources, put your focus in the wrong direction and yield significantly lower results than putting your AI implementation focus on driving sales results in the first place.

In other words, as long as your resources are limited, focus on the right AI initiatives and don't let the choice be ruled by luck.

Grow your business effectively

Just imagine you have a clear overview of your beautiful business machine.

You see the structure, the people, the process laid out before you.

NOW you look where AI has the biggest impact to drive your business forward in a leap.

THEN you decide to drive this area forward, knowing you're at the right spot, promising maximum return.

Can you sense how more effective and powerful this approach is, against trying to keep up with all the bells and whistles that the AI circus is offering you?

How do you do this?

A strategic approach focusing on overview and prioritization of AI may sound simple and obvious.

But of course, it comes with difficulties!

HOW do you get this overview of your company (structure, people, process, value drivers) in the first place?

And HOW do you get the overview of the current state of AI developments?

Let alone HOW do you keep up with new developments?

And then, HOW do you continuously match both, to come to a sound prioritization?

And HOW on earth should you do this while running the everyday aspects of management and business in the first place?

I see the difficulties and they are for real.

But there is a way how you can do this.

The solution is, - and now please don't laugh - in approaching the strategic approach of AI strategically.

That means: If you have a clear, step-by-step plan to make you check off all the factors I've just listed, you get exactly what you're looking for.

You will have the necessary company overview.

You will have the AI overview.

And coming from there, you can match both to make the best decisions.

It's really only these three steps that can give you a firm grip on AI and that can make you stay calm and assured that you have this AI thing covered for your company.

To if taking these three steps sounds reasonable, I invite you to take this Free Masterclass on how to set them up step-by-step.

If anything did NOT sound reasonable, or you have any questions or additions, PLEASE reach out and let me know!

Thank you and have a GREAT day!

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