Amelia Waters explains why AI won’t transform your business but will accelerate your processes, including the messy ones.
A client recently told me, “We bought AI licenses for everyone, but nothing’s really changed. We’re still doing everything the same way, just… with AI.”
That’s like buying a race car and driving it through a school zone—technically you have the horsepower, but your environment is designed to keep you slow.
Most companies are layering AI onto processes and policies that were built for a world of scarcity. Scarcity of information. Scarcity of processing power. Scarcity of real-time insights.
But AI operates in a world of abundance.
When you force abundant technology to work within scarce frameworks, you get expensive disappointment instead of transformation.
The Problem with “AI Sprinkles”
I call it “AI sprinkles”—that tendency to dust artificial intelligence on top of existing workflows and expect magic to happen. It’s like putting a Formula One engine in a horse-drawn carriage and wondering why you’re not winning races.
Your current policies were designed around three fundamental limitations that AI obliterates:
Limited Processing Speed: Your approval chains exist because humans needed time to review, analyze, and decide. When AI can process that same information in seconds, why are you still requiring three-day review cycles?
Information Scarcity: Your reporting structures were built when data was hard to gather and harder to analyze. When AI can synthesize insights from multiple sources instantly, why are you still waiting for monthly reports to make decisions?
Human Bottlenecks: Your workflows route everything through specific people because they had unique expertise or access. When AI can democratize that expertise across your organization, why are you still creating artificial chokepoints?
Key points include:
- Democratizing expertise
- Customer support
- The five-step framework for policy redesign
Read the full article, Don’t Just Add AI Sprinkles: Why Your Old Policies Are Sabotaging Your Technology Investment, on EsoEdge.Substack.com.