Answers

I signed off an AI strategy six months ago and not one thing has shipped. What normally goes wrong?

Zachary King, Cofounder and CEO at Works · LinkedIn

Short answer

A strategy is a document, and documents don't ship. Most stalled AI strategies have no named owner for the first workflow, no date and no defined outcome. Everyone agrees in the room, then goes back to working the way they always have. Pick one workflow, give it an owner and a 30-day deadline.

Do this week

Pull out the strategy. Choose the single most boring workflow in it, name an owner and set a 30-day ship date.

Transcript

I signed off an AI strategy six months ago, but nothing has shipped. What went wrong?

It's because a strategy is a document, and a document doesn't ship. We get this quite a lot, actually. Everyone signs off on the document, everyone gets excited, everyone nods their heads, and then that document goes back into the drawer, and people get on doing the business, doing the work the way that they always have.

Almost every business that calls us has a strategy, and we ask one question about it. Who was supposed to ship that first workflow? Who owns it? What's the date? What's the outcome? What goes in there?

So, pull out your strategy today. Pull out the single most boring workflow and give it an owner and give it a timeline. Say, "Right, this has to ship in 30 days." If it still doesn't ship, then the problem was never the strategy.

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