Article
At networking meetings here in Calgary, people ask me about AI all the time. Then I ask how many AI agents they're running inside their business.
The answer is usually zero.
Fair enough. There is a big gap between being interested in AI and knowing where to put it to work. A lot of the confusion starts with the way people picture the technology. AI gets treated like a magical black box that can make decisions and sort out the business around it.
I find it more useful to think of AI as an accelerator. Once you look at it that way, the question changes: What are you accelerating?
Faster order or faster chaos?
Imagine bringing an intern into your business tomorrow. They can do a bunch of things.
Would they step into a clear operation where the processes are written down and the work is neat and tidy? If so, they could help that order move faster.
Or would they walk into chaos and dysfunction? In that case, adding more speed could make the confusion worse.
AI creates the same question. Speed is useful when you know what should happen. It is much less useful when nobody can explain the workflow it is supposed to speed up.
That may be one reason so many business owners are interested in AI but haven't adopted it. They are trying to figure out how to get the most from the technology before they understand how their business runs at that level.
Start with one workflow
You do not need to map the whole company before using AI. Start with one workflow.
Pick a piece of work that already happens in the business and write down how it moves from start to finish. Keep it simple. The goal is to understand what happens well enough that you can see what making it faster would mean.
Then look at that workflow and ask where AI could make that specific piece of work faster without creating more confusion.
- Choose one workflow.
- Map how it works now.
- Decide what part, if any, should move faster.
- Test whether AI can help with that part.
This keeps the conversation grounded in the business you have today. It also gives you a clearer way to judge whether an AI agent would help. If you cannot describe the workflow, that is the place to start. Once the work is clear, you can decide whether acceleration would create more order or simply help the chaos arrive sooner.