AI Doesn’t Come in Shrinkwrap

Without a deeper understanding of how AI changes business, it is human to assume that it is just a simple product you plug into your current business engine and voila, you’re AI-turbocharged. Everything changes for a neat licence cost per seat. But that is just scratching the surface.

Merely thinking about AI as a tool is what is holding companies back. Don’t get me wrong, there are incredible AI tools that enrich and speed up our everyday work. This text was written by a human, but the grammar is checked with gracious help from Gemini. That’s all well and good, yet fine-tuning your language is far from revolutionizing your business logic.

It would be tempting to walk into the AI supermarket, grab a carton of efficiency and a bag of process automation and exit through the checkout. There are vendors promising turnkey solutions. You can tick the “yes, we’re doing the AI thing, too” box with those. Nothing fundamental changes. Yet going that way is very tempting when the corporate leadership wants to see something tangible done, and preferably quickly.

Companies need to commit to change management projects if they want to reap the benefits of AI. When you embed AI into high-value workflows, and integrate it deeply into your business, magic happens. That requires a leap of faith. And that is precisely why you can gain a competitive advantage.

There is an MIT study that has been recently making waves: 95% of GenAI pilots fail. One could use that study to spread doom and gloom and say AI as a whole is a fad. That would be just reading the headline and ignoring the true value of that study. There is an inspiring message in that remaining 5%.

The 5% of pilots that succeed are designed to overcome friction. The inherent friction in organizations comes from three sources: human, organizational and technical. Humans resist from fear, habit and uncertainty. Organizational friction is due to policies, governance issues and mismatched incentives. Technical friction comes from systems lacking memory, learning or context.

To put this in broader perspective: success is dependent on how well the organization handles the change management. If there’s no need for active management and there’s no friction – it is a signal that the pilot is way too shallow to leave a mark.

AI is not something that you buy. It is something you build, cultivate and embed in your organization. It is not sold in a neat shrink-wrapped package. It is a journey.