Give Your Business a Brain

Clients often ask me, "Where do I start with AI?" Many have experimented or run pilots, only to find the results underwhelming. Despite their best efforts, these projects often fail to deliver the outcomes needed to build momentum, engage staff and deliver a compelling ROI.

The challenge isn't in finding cutting-edge AI tech; it's about identifying something simple, cost-effective, quick to deploy, and immediately impactful.

Image by ChatGPT-4o

A Practical First Step

I'm going to suggest a practical first step that meets these criteria. Before I do, it's important to clarify: although I'm highlighting a specific product, I have no relationship with its vendor. It’s just one excellent example among many similar options, but it particularly illustrates the approach I'm advocating.

A straightforward and highly effective initial use of AI for productivity gains is simple: record all your meetings - online or face-to-face - and make the transcripts searchable by AI. Suddenly, understanding what's happening right now across your organisation becomes as easy as asking a question. (Of course, there are gaps, like emails and individual phone calls, but these are relatively simple to address as you progress to a "stage 2".) Imagine, as a CEO, being gifted with x-ray vision into every corner of your business. Imagine, as a staff member, taking a week off and coming back to an instant summary of every relevant thing that happened while you were away. And so on...

Introducing Granola.ai

A great example of a product designed specifically for this use case is Granola.ai, which has clearly outlined this idea in their blog post here. Granola stands out due to its intentionally lightweight, flexible, and non-invasive design. You can start small - perhaps with just one team or a single project—and immediately see results. From there, scaling up is relatively effortless. It genuinely has the potential to become the new "brain" of your organisation.

Surfacing Staff Concerns

Another significant benefit of adopting Granola (or a similar product) is that it places AI front-and-centre in your organisation, inevitably surfacing staff concerns. While this might initially seem problematic, these concerns already exist beneath the surface, quietly undermining your future competitiveness. The radical transparency I’m proposing could indeed be confronting for many, but it’s far better to address these cultural roadblocks proactively, rather than allow them to become disruptive later.

Ideal for Agile Businesses

Realistically, this approach suits smaller, more agile businesses best. Larger enterprises, burdened by inherent complexities in structure and procedure, may find even streamlined solutions like Granola challenging to implement initially. However, this shouldn’t discourage larger firms from exploring such solutions—there’s significant value here for organisations of all sizes willing to take the first step.

In short, if you're seeking to genuinely harness AI in a way that quickly delivers meaningful returns, this could be the perfect place to start. Give your business a brain—it might be simpler than you think.