I was at the Microsoft AI Tour last week. Microsoft exists to sell products. I worked there many years ago in their industry team and the license always won over the solution. It’s in the DNA. They do make some great products. We are a top-tier Microsoft AI partner and we deploy them in our engagements. But AI is not about software products. It's so far away from what most businesses need that its like trying to sell them a chocolate eclair to hammer in a nail. AI transformat

Clarity and repetition of key themes are fundamental tenets of messaging. If you asked your team these questions, do you think you would get consistent answers from them? 1. What does our business do? 2. What is the top priority for our business? 3. What is your role in that and what are your goals for this week/quarter? In my experience people find it hard to move their thinking to 1 and 2 when they spend so much time in one detailed element of 3. The context switch is jarri

Let's get experimental. It's very easy to get stuck in the mindset of we've always done it this way and this is particularly true when your previous efforts have been successful. You may notice that when you're not being successful there is a tendency to try lots of new things, perhaps somewhat in desperation. Neither of these is optimal, of course. In either state it is important to try new things in a controlled way that allows you to test a hypothesis and evaluate what var

Are you frustrated that your teams don’t want to change or try new ideas? I don’t think it’s possible to enforce change in another human. Change is an internal process, not an external one. So what can you do to help? You can give people a new input: a piece of data that could change their perspective. As an example, let's say you know you are overweight and you want to do something about it, but you don't persist with diets and lifestyle choices. I've been through this mysel

AI is not going to take your job. Someone using AI will take your job. Yes, yes, we've heard that before, Neil. The bit that gets missed is that those people using AI will need different skills. AI-enabled teams will need more emphasis on logic, critical thinking, debate and reasoning than pure technical capability. For example, writing efficient prompts for GenAI is a skill: if you overload the prompt you can create all kinds of problems including hallucinations in your answ

If you're interested in AI adoption rates in the UK then this is worth a read. https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/economics/article/will-ai-solve-the-uks-growth-problem-dont-be-so-sure-k75rd87kx It appears that only 37% of UK businesses have actively deployed AI.[Source is the IBM Global AI Adoption Index Report fromDecember 2023] I wonder how many of the cases where AI is actively deployed are either people leaking corporate data to ChatGPT directly, a SaaS vendor with

This is now a reality for non-technical people: you can build an MVP app to demo, with zero technical knowledge and a series of prompts. It's a skill, but it's not coding. And that is just fine. I had a go at building my first Python app over Christmas using a similar approach (as a non-programmer). I then went on to use cursor.com, which is amazing. The people with the ideas are always more powerful than the people with the facts. This approach can help democratise the first

If you are not spending hours a week learning, listening to new ideas, and trying to improve your emotional perspectives then you are failing your team. You would reasonably expect all of these things from people around you. You need to be leading the way. It’s not about hierarchy, it’s about action. I don't have time In my experience that is rarely the reason. You are likely choosing to prioritise other tasks over this. You could decline four hours of meetings this week and

We talk a lot about AI on here. It is going to change the world and reset the job market. However. I had to go to the dentist today and was asked to fill in a form with a pen. I had already given them half the information and someone will now rekey it all in. Most of the world is in this state, one where we have not fully digitised basic processes. Why is there not an accessible and secure medical record for me, that I can choose to share with people? AI has a very long and i

Technology adoption is a thing done by humans. Humans don't tend to cope well with rapid or disruptive change. AI is a very large and disruptive change. Will you take on the challenge to adopt an AI-First mindset? Do you have a choice?

Technology does not drive change: people do. People are complex. Even when technology exists to replace a job, the transition doesn’t happen overnight. People resist change. Companies protect investments. Governments regulate employment impacts. Educational systems update slowly. This economic drag means workforce shifts unfold over generations, not years. AI delivers amazing benefits to business but I suspect the speed of change will be slower than it could be.

If you work at, or with Microsoft, and you're struggling with Copilot adoption then we should talk. We've just released the Neologik Copilot Connector in beta. It does many things but two in particular: 1. Curates the information you use in each agent. We can version control the models and select specific content/workflows to use in different agents/scenarios. This hugely increases relevance and accuracy. 2. Output content into any Microsoft Office format. Use your templates

Something very unpleasant is happening to us all: rapid change. Rapid change is very uncomfortable for humans so we do anything we can to avoid it, particularly if it strikes at the heart of our sense of self, status, affections or aspirations. The speed of technology development is always hard to manage for humans but the speed of (Gen)AI -driven change is truly startling. Here are some examples. 1. Investors that I meet are struggling to find stability in this AI quicksand.

As I meet more and more prospects in the mid-market, I see similar patterns. One of these is the lack of a CRM tool. There is often something else acting in the role (a spreadsheet or a highly customised application that was first designed to do something else). If you want to get insights on your customers (and you do) then you should think about getting a solution that is designed for the purpose, and can form the data foundation of your AI future. There are lots of good, c

If you are looking to start using AI in your business then this is a great litmus test for likely success: It’s not the most technically impressive workflows that move the needle. It’s the ones that are: 1. Easy to adopt 2. Embedded in the way people already work 3. Instantly useful

There are three modes of AI usage in the corporate environment. 1. Ad-hoc. Using Microsoft Copilot or ChatGPT to achieve or speed up tasks. Summarise this, idea that, create a picture etc. 2. Data Driven. Data science heavy scenarios using Machine Learning and other AI tooling to spot patterns in data. 3. Structured Workflow. Combining documents and data with AI technology to automate and transform businesses. We do number 3. It's a new category and we're leading the way with

If you are deploying an AI solution and it requires all of your general users to become really good at prompting, in order to get accurate answers, then your solution will fail.

When doing an online course for compliance training at work, you often need to complete a quiz. Top Tip: If you are unsure how to answer, the longest answer is usually the right one. Question setters don’t bother writing long false answers (and employees read LinkedIn posts like this one) because they don’t enjoy doing the task. People will generally take the path that requires the least amount of work unless they are specifically motivated for some other reason. If you are l

Love this line: That means if you’re still shipping AI features that require users to figure out the prompt, you’re not building for the new standard. You can't expect users to become prompt engineers. It won't scale.

As I interact with businesses in my day-to-day life, I see so much opportunity for them to transform. As a case in point, I had a disappointing experience with WeBuyAnyCar.com this week and it could have been so much better. You may not be surprised to hear that the offer I got on arrival was not the offer made via the original enquiry. My car was rated Grade 3, and one of the reasons given was that it did not have <5k miles, despite giving them the mileage (68k) on the origi