350. AI Isn't The Problem. Your Decisions Are.

Company leaders are treating AI as the solution, but they haven't even defined the problem. Spoiler Alert: your decisions are the problem.

This is The Best Leadership Newsletter Ever. Become the leader people want to follow - in 5 laugh-out-loud minutes a week

---

Leaders love solutions.
They don’t love problems.

There’s a thing called the Iceberg of Ignorance. It says that senior leadership only knows 4% of a company’s problems. Frontline workers know 100% of them.

Yet it’s these same senior leaders who are making the big strategic decisions for companies, despite the fact they only know 4% of the problems.

These days, it means the execs are demanding the integration of AI without understanding the real world implications.

It’s a bad strategy - like signing up your team for a marathon and forgetting to tell them they should probably start running.

Company leaders are treating AI as a solution, even though nobody has defined the problem.

(tweet that)

Tool-First Thinking

AI has become the corporate version of the flashy red Mustang in a mid-life crisis. Leaders want it for all the mid-life reasons:

• It makes you cool

• It feels innovative

• It looks great in board decks

• It scares competitors

• It makes you feel future-proofed

But adding AI because “everyone else is doing it” is not innovation - that’s more like Halloween.

Just because you’re dressed as a superhero, doesn’t mean you will fly.

(tweet that)

The Problem With Starting At The Solution

When a company starts with the solution instead of the problem, there are five predictable pitfalls:

1. They automate the wrong thing

2. They create more work instead of less

3. They break processes that weren’t broken

4. They confuse and overwhelm employees

5. They waste money and morale

Simply put, if you automate chaos, all you’re gonna end up with is more chaos.

What Real Problems Actually Look Like

The most important thing for you and your company when it comes to innovation, is that you focus on real problems. Real problems have four specific characteristics:

1. Pain: People are feeling pain (it’s not just execs with FOMO)

2. Cost: You can measure the real cost of not implementing a solution (e.g. missed revenue, wasted time)

3. Problem: The people impacted by the problem can describe it in one sentence.

4. Improvement: Solving the problem will quickly improve efficiency, revenue and sanity.

“Our customer support team is drowning in tickets” is a real problem that needs fixing.

“Our competitors are moving faster with AI” is not.

When AI Makes Bad Problems Worse

I work with a SaaS company in the awkward stage of early-growth mode. They have 70 employees and very good, high 8-figure revenue

But like most early-growth companies, they have no scalable processes, a healthy dollop of tech debt, and they’re hiring faster than their onboarding can keep up.

The sales and CS teams got nervous when their competitors launched AI solutions. So the leadership team decided to take the ball and move fast.

They abandoned their roadmap, rerouted resources, and built an AI product in six weeks.

Did it catapult them?
Sure. Just not in the direction they wanted.

• They lost three clients because they failed to deliver on promises

• Because they ignored fixing the tech debt, the AI performs inconsistently, at best

• The clients that tried it don’t understand why they need it and asked for it to be removed

• Team morale has sunk lower than low

But, hey, the execs can tell people that they’ve integrated AI when all they’ve really done is amplified their chaos.

The Leader’s Litmus Test

If you think you’re putting the solution before the problem, here is a simple 3-question framework to keep you in check.

1. What human pain are we trying to solve?

2. What would success look like without AI?

3. Is AI the simplest and most effective way to solve this… or it it just the coolest?

If you can’t answer all three, you’re not solving a problem. You’re probably creating one.

Start With the Problem, End With the Tool

Here’s the truth, my friend. You don’t need an AI strategy, you need a problem-solving strategy.

The companies that will win aren’t the ones who claim to be “AI first”. The winners are ones who are human problem-first. (tweet that)

In fact, here’s a quick story that the ADHD in me wants to share now:

A few years ago, I switched web hosts to a company whose customer support was phenomenal. They were authentic. They were efficient. They even cared enough to solve problems outside their scope. I loved them.

Three months ago, they replaced their support team with AI.
It’s now unusable. It lacks their human connection. Frankly, it’s f—ing frustrating.

They used AI to solve a problem they never even had.
Now they’re irrelevant

Don’t be that company.

The Future Isn’t About The Fastest

The future doesn’t belong to the companies that adopt AI the fastest. It belongs to the companies that adopt AI the wisest.

AI isn’t the threat.
AI isn’t the enemy.
AI isn’t coming for your job.
Your poor decision-making is.

So start with the problem.
End with the tool.

And in the process, maybe lead with a bit of humanity.

---

How good of a leader are you?

It’s time to find out. Take the free assessment.

---

If you like this post, please share it on LinkedIn or X🙏🏽👊🏼