What Can AI Do For My Business?

Most business owners and managers are taking a keen interest in AI  They have heard the hype and are now excited to learn the reality - to hear of the successful case studies of AI introduction and also the occasional failures (though failures can be under-reported as few want to advertise their failures).

But of course, the real winners are those who have read about the potential of AI to assist with, or replace, business processes and tasks - and have then explored within their own business how that potential might be realised and translated into lower costs, higher productivity, better quality or whatever.

Learning by doing, snd learning by failing, are often the most valuable - if sometimes the most painful - lessons.

So, if you wait to read about a successful introduction of AI to an organisation like yours or to a process like one of yours, you might have the chance to repeat that success. 

But if the successful organisation is one of your competitors, you might be too late.

Take the risk of being a leader.  Leaders often win.  Fewer followers do! 

The Essential Business Quality

 Is there one? One quality which is more valuable (and therefore more necessary) than others.

Well, that is not a simple question.   All businesses need a variety and a numb er of qualities to go successful through their start-up phase and then perhaps a different (though overlapping) set of qualities for their 'stablisation' phase, their growth phase - and so on

However, through each of these phases, perhaps one specific quality is more valuable than others.  

Then, we get the situation where the external context (the business environment) makes a particular quality more important.

As of now, all businesses are facing threats from technology (and specifically AI).  Ironically the threat posed by AI is even applicable to AI companies themselves. (The biggest threat is faced by those whg don't think they are facing a threat.)

In situations where there is a generic, external threat (and especially where that threat is only partially understood) all businesses need the essential quality of remaining flexible.  This can be called flexibility, agility, resilience or ….. but it is the ability to 'read' the situation and take appropriate action.  This will depend on the market the business is in - but act it must.  

So, all businesses should currently be reading their own situation snd the external factors that are in play (and how these relate to the business and the way it operates).  They should be getting ready to act - even if they are not yet quite ready to act.

Is your business agile enough to survive?

Just Work a Bit Harder

 That’s what many of us think we have to do to make ourselves more productive, more effective.

But it’s not true!

I’ve repeated many times in this blog that you are not productive if you are not doing the right things.

The simplest way to illustrate this is if you have a product in your portfolio that is loosing money - for whatever reason.  If you increase the output of that product you lose more money.  Is this a smart thing to do?  Of course not.

You have to have a sound and secure strategy - designed to meet your long-term goals, achieve your mission.  Then you have to translate that strategy into a series of action plans designed to reach agreed targets along that route to success.  

This is really what’s meant by ‘Work smarter, not harder’.

There are all sorts of intermediary and ancillary issues to think about - staff training, development  and deployment, staff well-being, your own well-being,  looking past current priorities through improved marketing snd productivity innovation ….. I could go on but I guess you get the picture.

Think about why you are running a business (or a department, a machine, a process, etc.  Then think about what success means. Start to plan how to get there.  

Then work hard!