Stop wasting time on AI fluency projects

If your business model prints cash, then by all means, have a 20% project policy or an AI fluency boondoggle-fest. But if you are under real pressure to build an AI-first or AI-efficient business, just stop. It's not that fluency projects aren't important, they simply aren't efficient, and they are ultimately contributing to layoffs.

The new world of work requires you to focus on work that is both important and efficient . That means leveraging the AI-first value proposition of a 10x+ improvement (ideally to the top line), and you won't get there efficiently without more focused execution.

What to do instead

1. Get smarter about the measurements - decide which areas of the business you are going to invest in intentionally. Focus not only on cost but also on opportunity cost as you should also be aware of change fatigue. Be focused and intentional.

   
   

2. Create a senior role to drive the change. This role should have real business context, technical expertise, and a strong activator profile. It should be responsible for mapping out projects and securing executive buy-in and quantifying the success metrics.

   
   

3. Activate cross-functional pilot teams for build-out and rollout. Once you have clear requirements, success measurements, and capabilities, proceed quickly - these cycles must take days or weeks, not months.

   
   

4. Use the rollouts to build AI fluency , discovery and feedback loops. These efforts must leverage programs that are directly applied to your business problems. By having tight alignment to the business needs, AI fluency will become a byproduct - not the product.

   
   

Honestly, I believe people should be building their own AI experiments in their daily lives for their own benefit. But if they haven’t already done this by now, giving them unstructured programs isn’t likely to help. Just like we taught grandparents to use FaceTime by setting up video calls with grandkids, and how we moved corporate users from Webex to Microsoft Teams (or any other “productivity tool”) by simply forcing a cutover. We need the same conviction with our corporate AI initiatives. Having quantified business outcomes defined up front will drive clarity for what and why all levels.

As covered well in the book Switch, the key is to shape the path. The problem I see is that people are focusing on the rider (how to do something) instead of shaping the path (use this tool to solve an important business problem in your job). Simply teaching people how AI works, is not necessarily going to achieve your business goals.

The time for playing around with AI has passed, we must accelerate value creation. So stop with the fluency training and focus on improving the tools and processes critical to the business. Direct your budget and energy toward identifying the right areas to leverage AI, and let fluency scoring serve as a way to improve your programs, not the proxy metric for progress.

Someday, the magic agent that books your airline flight* might happen, or it might not. But unless your business is travel, stop investing in vanity projects and focus on the innovations your business needs to improve today. Of course, you have more to learn on this topic and new ideas for innovation will emerge, but stop waiting and get moving.

I promise the collective intelligence that emerges from these rollouts will allow you to capture new use cases as they become clearer. Until then, stop the navel-gazing and focus on creating value. You’ll be happier with the results, and honestly, we’ll all learn something. Isn’t that the real point of these fluency programs?

Now excuse me while I fire up my AI assistant to help me complete my travel plans...

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*why is this the only agent example anyone can think of? I feel like I'm in the 2000's when all people wanted to talk about was comparing specs to buy a new television(!!). The issue I have with these use cases are the same - the ROI is not great for me. I want innovation that solves a problem I really want solved. I have never been that interested in televisions and while I do love travel I don't find flight purchase anywhere close to a high value automation need.