Top 10 for a business deploying AI
Short enough to bookmark and paste into Slack. Each line is the rule. The sentence under it is why.
Start with one painful process, not a platform.
Why: A tool with no home in Friday’s work becomes shelfware; a single process with a baseline can prove the idea.
See the first-use-case articleWrite the “before” number down this week, before anyone logs in.
Why: If you did not measure the old time, error rate, or cycle time, you will not be able to defend the new one.
See the scoreboard articleBuy the sanctioned seat before you write the ban.
Why: People are already pasting work into personal chat tools; a usable official option is the only ban that holds.
See the shadow AI articleName what must never be pasted (customer files, passwords, pricing, health or payment data).
Why: Most leakage is a helper trying to finish a task, not a bad actor.
See the shadow AI articleMake a person, not “the AI,” accountable for anything that leaves the building or moves money.
Why: Confident wrong answers are a business risk; a named reviewer is the control that actually gets used.
See the process articleTrain inside the real job, not in a generic prompt class.
Why: People keep habits they practiced on live work and drop habits they only saw in a slide.
See the process articleAppoint helpers, not hobbyists, as champions.
Why: Early adopters chase features; champions translate the tool into a coworker’s actual Tuesday.
Clean the source of truth for that one process before you automate it.
Why: AI on a messy customer relationship management system (CRM) or a stale knowledge base just produces faster, more confident errors.
See the data-readiness articleCount all-in cost (license, setup, training, review, usage), not just the monthly fee.
Why: Firms that cannot see operating cost are the ones that cannot show return, and usage-based spend is easy to miss.
See the scoreboard articleGive every pilot a review date and a kill rule.
Why: Stopping a weak use case is how you protect budget and trust for the next one.