I’ve repeated this to clients, people I mentor, and others I advise too many times over the past few months. It’s time I share it more publicly:
Emerging technology requires a different adoption-strategy approach.
❌ “begin with the end in mind”
✅ “begin with today’s pain”
“Beginning with the end in mind” is an approach many have been taught for personal development and that has often been translated to business-strategy development as a call to define a clear vision of your desired destination followed by development of specific measures of success and a plan to achieve them.
This is a useful approach for building a technology-adoption strategy when:
The technology you are adopting has a well-known and well-tested use-case,
is not dramatically evolving in real time,
and many people are generally familiar with and/or comfortable using it.
That is not the current state of AI nor any emerging technology.
When a technology has not yet settled around clear use cases, is evolving rapidly, and most people are still unfamiliar with it, the most effective adoption strategy is different: begin with using it to solve today’s operational pain and evolve from there.
This gives the technology credibility while allowing people to experience it solving something they actually care about, thus making them more interested in learning to become familiar with and comfortable using it, all while addressing legitimate impediments to success and velocity.
Moreover, as the most common and most expensive pain points start to become addressed, you’ll inherently find that the low-hanging-fruit issues you thought you needed to address using technology often go away on their own.
You’ll also inherently gain the actionable information you need to further determine how to adopt the emerging technology in other useful ways.
If this insight resonates with you, intrigues you, or frustrates you: reach out today for a confidential conversation.