So, you’ve decided to roll out AI in your business… but somewhere along the way, you lost the instruction manual.
Now you’re stuck wondering:
- Should I survey the staff and see how they feel?
- Do I need a consultant with a six-figure price tag to map out my processes?
- Or do I just throw money at a “roadmap” and hope for the best?
The answer? Well, yes and no (but mostly no).
AI Is About People First, Not Tech
Here’s the part most business leaders overlook: AI is as much about people as it is about algorithms.
If you implement AI without considering staff morale, job roles, and productivity, you’re not building a strategy—you’re lighting a fuse. Get this wrong and AI gets the blame for all the company’s problems. Get it right and it becomes the thing that makes your team’s working lives easier (and your business more profitable).
So, where should you start? By making AI useful to your staff,.
Start Small, Win Big
Forget “enterprise-wide AI roadmaps” for now. Start with small wins that make daily work easier.
- Email overload? Show staff how Copilot can summarise long chains in Outlook. Goodbye TLDR replies.
- Spreadsheet fatigue? Let Excel Copilot suggest formulas, clean formatting, or generate insights your team might never have spotted.
- Marketing bottlenecks? Instead of paying freelancers for every LinkedIn post, use ChatGPT to draft content at speed. (Just remember: AI-generated images may get treated differently by social platforms in future.)
- Legal logjams? If contracts are clogging up Sales, drag-and-drop them into an AI Agent. It’ll spit out a comparison table in minutes, freeing your expensive lawyers to focus on higher-value work.
These are the kinds of use cases that get staff nodding along, not rolling their eyes.
The Rise of AI Agents
Think of an AI Agent as a pre-programmed bot that live in Teams or on the desktop. Feed it files, and it executes a specific task—like comparing two contracts or flagging unusual expenses.
The power here? AI makes it possible for junior staff to handle senior-level tasks.
- A £100/hour junior can review contracts, while a £300/hour solicitor just does the final sign-off.
- Productivity soars, costs drop, and you can still charge full-rate for the engagement.
This isn’t replacing humans—it’s levelling up your whole workforce.
Avoid the Backlash
Of course, there’s a catch. Introduce AI too aggressively and staff will feel it’s being imposed on them. You risk resistance, resentment, and in some cases even ‘quiet quitting’.
There’s also the broader question: if everyone adopts AI, doesn’t the playing field just level up again? Short-term gains are real, but sustainable success depends on how you embed AI into your culture.
The AI Adoption Formula
If you take nothing else from this post, remember this:
- Start small. Quick wins build trust.
- Show staff the benefit. Make their lives easier, not harder.
- Scale gradually. Move from user-facing wins to back-office automation.
- Think many small agents, not one big AI. Easier to manage, lower risk if one fails.
Final Thought: Start Small for Big Impact
The point isn’t to build the perfect AI strategy from day one. It’s to start—show your people real improvements in their daily work and let the momentum grow.
Because once your team sees AI making life easier, they’ll start spotting opportunities themselves. That’s when the upward spiral of efficiency begins.
So yes—you may have lost the instruction manual, but here’s the good news: AI doesn’t need one.
It just needs you to start small, win trust, and scale smart.
Simon
