Most companies incorporate artificial intelligence into daily operations, but few understand what it actually produces. Enthusiasm has outpaced careful planning, and the initial results are beginning to reveal this discrepancy.
On today’s episode of Business Trends Today, Chris Day, Founder and CEO of ScalePad and author of the upcoming book MSP to MVP, joins us to discuss why AI adoption is failing at the leadership level rather than the technology level.
Businesses are behind on AI, not individuals
Individuals picked up AI quickly, with most people using it to some extent every day. But companies have not kept pace, Day said. Report after report shows businesses unable to attach a number to the value they are getting from it.
"I think we're the early days of massive failed AI projects as well, because like most things, you don't put a program around it. It's sort of, it's the tail wagging the dog."
Companies that cannot measure the return are the ones he expects to fail first. Failed software and technology projects have a long history, and AI is at the front end of the same pattern.
Moving too fast and losing the core business
The most common error is committing to something before understanding it. Owners hear that an app can be coded in a weekend, then set out to build one that replaces a CRM or a financial system.
Much of Day’s advising now runs the other direction. He spends time talking owners out of those projects.
The reason is what arrives after launch. Building the software makes the company a software business, and someone has to support the program once it is live. Day acknowledges the upside in these efforts. The risk sits elsewhere.
Every owner is now an AI leader
AI has handed business owners a job title they never applied for. Whether most are equipped to hold it is the open question.
"From the leadership side, I think it's making every business owner into now like an AI leader. And, you know, are most business owners equipped to handle that job?"
For 20 years, small businesses paid little attention to technology beyond wanting the computers to work, Day said. That has changed. Owners now want AI to improve sales, sharpen marketing and streamline operations.
Leading that work is a separate skill, and one most operators never had reason to build. Day suggests the answer is outside help. The person who coaches the owner through the process matters more than any single tool decision.
Governance first, then room to work
Governance belongs in place before the first AI initiative begins. That sequencing also gives managed service providers something substantive to bring to owners.
The security and operational work that mattered before AI matters more now, not less. Readiness comes down to a few basic questions. Whether a governance process exists. Whether leadership can see what employees are doing. Whether proprietary information can be kept from leaving the building.
The consequences have not surfaced yet. Day expects them to arrive the way a leaked formula does, with someone stumbling onto a Coke recipe in the open and asking how it got there.
Restricting employees carries its own cost. Workers who use AI well are producing far more, something Day has watched inside his own company. He put the gain at 10 times the output.
Technology as strategic advantage
Elevating small businesses is the argument at the center of MSP to MVP. Technology spent years as an afterthought inside those companies.
The practical aim is connecting managed service providers with the small and mid-market businesses that account for 60% of GDP. Engaging those owners on initiatives like AI, clearly enough that they feel confident in the decisions in front of them, is the work Day describes.
Customer success is the underlying subject. The software industry went through the same maturation 15 years ago, and the MSP industry is still growing up in that regard, according to Day.
In practice, that means getting in front of customers with a plan and a strategy they will sign off on. AI is his example of the conversation that opens the door.
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