AI Beyond the Bullshit: Navigating the Future of Work

For the past year or two, I've talked a lot about topics such as growth, strategy and leadership.

But the single biggest factor set to impact all three for the next decade is Artificial Intelligence.  The hype is everywhere (and some of it is just hype) but the underlying shift is real.  That’s why, alongside my regular work, I’ve been doing a lot of research into AI and running some experiments. 

It's time to cut through the noise and talk about what AI practically means for your business.

This isn't a random detour, it’s the next, most logical (and most urgent) step in any conversation about building a resilient, profitable business.  This letter is the first in a new series I'm starting, designed to give you an actionable, bullshit-free guide to navigating this new landscape.

What is AI? (The 60-second business owner's definition)

OK firstly forget the sci-fi robots!  That’s definitely in the “hype” category!  For businesses like ours, it's best to think of AI as a tool for scaling expertise.

It's an intern with super-powers, an analyst and copywriter all rolled into one.  For our purposes, there are two main types that matter:

• Predictive AI (the "analyst"): This technology has been around for years.  It finds patterns in data to predict what will happen next, for example, your Netflix recommendations, or predictive text function in your phone

• Generative AI (the "creator"): This is the one causing all the buzz (like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini). It actually creates new content - text, images, analysis and even code - based on your written prompts

The potential is twofold:  AI can automate low-level tasks and, more importantly, augments your high-level strategic thinking.

Why this matters to your business right now

This isn't just a "Big Tech" playing field any more. The barrier to entry - both in cost and complexity - has evaporated. Here’s why it’s an urgent priority for small and medium businesses:

• A new competitive landscape: The gap between businesses that make the most of AI tech and those that don't is going to widen, fast.  It’s a new foundation for productivity.  The team which can analyse 50 client interview transcripts or a massive spreadsheet of data in an hour will have a huge advantage over the firm that does it manually over several days

• Client expectations are shifting: Soon, clients will expect their supply chain to be AI-literate.  They'll want deeper insights, delivered faster, for the same price.  Your ability to use these tools will become an essential part of your value proposition

• It's Ridiculously Accessible: This is no longer a million-pound IT project.  Many of these powerful tools are cheap, built into software you already pay for (like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace), or even free

Beyond the bullshit: three places to use AI today

You don't need to spend months building your own AI programme.  First of all, you just need to learn how to use the tools that exist (and which you probably already have).  For example, today many of you could do any of the following:

1. Growth (marketing & sales):

• Drafting first-pass blog posts, social media updates and whitepapers

• Analysing market trends to identify new service offerings

• Personalising sales outreach emails and proposals at scale

2. Strategy (service delivery):

• Summarising long, client discovery interviews or workshop transcripts in seconds

• Analysing qualitative data from hundreds of employee surveys to find key themes

• Brainstorming initial frameworks, solutions and workshop agendas for a client problem

3. Operations (running the business):

• Drafting internal policies, job descriptions, or Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

• Automating the creation of meeting summaries and action items

• Streamlining client onboarding checklists and communication workflows

This isn't a tech problem, it's a leadership challenge

AI is not just a technology problem, it's a leadership and change management challenge.  The firms that win won't just be the ones that buy the software, but the ones whose leaders ask the right strategic questions.

These three, for example:

1. The "data" question: AI is useless without data.  Is your internal IP, client data and project history organised and accessible?  Or is it locked in a thousand different Word documents and disconnected folders?

2. The "people" question: How will you upskill your team?  How do you create a culture of "curious experimentation" rather than fear of redundancy?

3. The "risk" question: What is your policy?  You cannot put sensitive client information into a public AI tool.  How will you use this safely and ethically to protect your clients and your business?

Your first three steps (call it this week’s homework)

Maybe you’re already ahead of the curve and if so, that’s great!  But if not, this can all feel overwhelming.  Let’s make it simple:

1. Get Curious: Pick one free tool (like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity) this week, ask it to do one small work task you'd normally do yourself (e.g., "Summarise this 10-page report into five bullet points" or "Brainstorm 5 blog titles about...").

2. Ask Your Team: Bring it up in your next team meeting.  Ask: "Where are you already using AI?  Where do you see opportunities to save time or deliver more value?"

3. Think "Bottleneck": Identify one repetitive, low-value task in your business that drains your team's time.  That's your first target

I’m convinced that AI is going to be the biggest strategic shift in our lifetimes.  

To that end, I'm focusing more of my own research and strategic work on helping businesses like yours build an AI advantage.  I’ll still be helping clients with their business growth, strategy and leadership challenges too. 

But like AI technology itself, this new focus will add to my existing work: levelling it up rather than detracting from it.