Most of your managers have found some way to use AI in their own work by now. A faster first draft, a summary of the week's numbers, a formula they no longer have to look up. What the company has usually not done is learn anything from it. Those gains live in private habits that nobody else can see, check or pick up, and a company cannot change work it cannot see.
The people are well ahead of the organization here. In an October article for McKinsey Quarterly, AI Is Changing Work. Now It Has to Change the Organization, 70 percent of respondents say they are personally ready for AI, while only 27 percent of leaders say their organizations are ready for the larger shifts it asks for. If you run a mid-market company, that second number is the one to worry about, because it is the one you control.
A private shortcut does not move a company number
Faster drafts do not show up on the income statement on their own. Somebody has to turn a good habit into the way a team works, and then decide what the saved time is for. That is the article's argument too: the value comes from redesigning how work moves through the organization, more than from each person using the tools alone.
Test one person's habit before you make it the team's
A manager's private shortcut has been tested by exactly one person, on their own work, judged by their own eye. It is a good start, and nobody else has checked it yet. My rule is that nothing becomes the team's process until a second person has run it and checked the result against the old way. You trust it once you have verified it, and you learn from what the check turns up. A company that skips the check either stays where it is or rolls out something nobody knows works.
Give the manager who found it the credit and the job
The manager who worked out a better way to build the forecast with AI has done work that appears on no org chart. If you ask them to hand it over and give nothing back, you will get the polished version of the habit and none of the judgment behind it. Recognize the work in front of the team, and make that manager the owner of the shared version while it gets tested.
That ownership is the step most companies skip. The order I would run it in:
- Ask each manager to write down one way they use AI, as steps another person could follow.
- Pick the one that touches a number the company already tracks.
- Have a second person run it for a month and compare its results with last month's.
- If it holds, make it the team's process, with the manager who found it as its owner, and decide what the team stops doing with the time it frees.
If nobody on your team uses AI yet, start smaller
All of this assumes people have already found their own uses. Some teams have not. They are waiting to be told it is allowed, or they tried once and got a bad answer. Most teams in that spot do not need more tools. They need permission to start small, on their own work, with a leader who asks what they learned. Turning a habit into a process comes after there are habits to look at.
Ask one manager to show you their steps
This week, sit with one manager and ask to see the last piece of work AI helped them with, and the steps that produced it. If nobody else on the team could repeat those steps, you have found your first process to test.
Once one team's process holds, the same question moves to the handoffs, which is where the work between departments needs an owner. What a fractional seat with me covers, AI work included, is on the services page. If you have picked a workflow and are not sure how to test it, tell me what it is and I will suggest a first check.
John Wyatt · John Wyatt's page · All posts · RSS