AI isn’t just ChatGPT.
Yes, OpenAI is one of the most famous AI vendors, but chatbots are not the only use case for AI. Experiment! Think outside the box! Check out the use cases and think about what may apply to your business. Just like with tools — focus on business-need-first, not tool-first.

You don’t need $100k tools.
Most of these workflows can be powered using what you already have, plus a little glue (i.e. Zapier, GPT APIs, Descript, etc.). You don’t need to go out and buy a huge AI tool, experiment and test your ideas on a smaller scale first.

Start with tasks, not the most complex use cases possible.
On LinkedIn and other social media, the most complex use cases get the most hype…but that doesn’t mean you should be focused on those use cases, because they are hard to set up and costly to maintain. Think about small tasks that take up a lot of time across the team and focus on those first, to practice and get people used to AI internally.

Prompt quality = output quality.
Different platforms require different prompting styles. ChatGPT ≠ Claude ≠ Claygent. Use prompt libraries, test widely, and document what works. Don’t be afraid to try and fail, a lot of my prompts took a few iterations to get it just right!

AI won’t save you from bad data.
Clean, normalized data is still the foundation. AI just makes it faster to reveal gaps, not magically fix them. Think about it like automation — you can automate a bunch of trashy data around, but it will still be trashy data and trashy results if you don’t clean up the data first. Trash in, trash out.

Human review is not optional.
Whether it’s PII risk, the careful handling of sensitive topics, or just tone — AI needs human review. Be careful about generating and sharing customer-facing content with AI…it’s possible, but it takes very specific use cases and REALLY tight prompting to make sure it doesn’t hallucinate and potentially produce something awkward. BTW: make sure any usage of PII is reviewed by your legal team and/or there are contracts in place with the AI solutions!

The ROI is real, if scoped well.
Saving hours spent on redundant tasks is one thing, but freeing up your team to focus on judgment, strategy, and experimentation is where the real ROI is. NOT in reducing team members across the board (cough cough CEOs).

Audit the pain points for the team. Create a list and get input from your stakeholders on which pain points are the most critical to them.

Offer the team a win early on — and weave in some process efficiencies too. I’ve found that people like to see, not hear — if they can see firsthand that a more efficient/well-documented process makes their lives easier, they are less likely to be adversarial or close-minded about it.

Remember that change is a journey…some people will be champions, others will be apathetic, others will actively try to block any changes. Figure out who your champions could be, and recruit them to help you generate hype and excitement for your efforts…it’s a lot easier to influence with the support of trusted peers within your stakeholder teams.

Be willing to introduce a v1 and let people see benefit, then get buy-in for a v2, v3, etc…any progress is great progress! Some teams are better at a drip-drip-drip of change rather than tons of change all at once. Which, speaking of…

Don’t introduce too much change at once. I know you want to fix everything, I understand that MOPs desire…but you have to be fair to the stakeholders who have to learn new systems and processes while also doing their pre-existing full time job. Be thoughtful about which change is the most important and solicit feedback/keep a pulse to see if people are getting overwhelmed. If they are getting overwhelmed, pause on any new (non-urgent) changes to give people a breather.

If you’re thinking “well, no one is excited about change at all, there are no change champions here…” give it a real shot, but then think about what you want. Do you want to spend a lot of your time and energy changing a company culture and getting buy-in?

If you would rather be making impactful changes than spending a lot of time convincing people of them, this may not be the role for you. Driving massive change can be really exciting and rewarding, or it can be draining. Figure out what gets you excited vs. what drains you and take care of yourself first.