In the same way people wanted a "faster horse" before they got a car, at least half of the AI-confused execs I talk to come to the conversation thinking they want "automation.
You don't want "AI automation," actually-you want:
Your customers to be much better off in the context of the particular niche in which you exist to profitably serve them;
To be able to serve them 10x faster, which either gives you:
reduced cycle times that let you get into upmarket competitors' OODA loops and eat their lunch (or, conversely, have yours eaten if you don't get with the AI times - many enterprises and even SMBs are at serious risk over the next 3-7 years) or
surplus human attention and energy that can be reinvested into building deeper relationships and exploring latent needs and nascent general purpose technologies, activities that, combined, could unlock access to new markets; and/or
3. To improve quality (and, sometimes in discontinuous ways, e.g., via NPD and "ethnographic research" and customer discovery as mentioned in 2) and reduce risk by using the word-crunching machines and ubiquitous digitization (AKA agentic reasoning models with access to all of the digital exhaust generated through multi-channel contact-and especially rich meeting recordings-between your company and its customers-as "macroscope") as a sort of "convexity detector" that makes it easier for you to reduce uncertainty through prudent, little bets that allow you to expand the scope and scale of your operations without the overhead of 20th century bureaucracy.*
AI" and "technology" is, at most, 49% of the equation; at least as important as whatever tool(s) you decide to make available to your employees is a commitment to formalizing:
a culture of constant experimentation (through your example and those of intrinsically motivated power users-note that they're naturally on a path to power anyway, so it would behoove you to elevate their status in the organization and invest early, as frustrated individuals of this archetype will otherwise disrupt the existing order or leave);
new, reformed roles that take seriously the idea that 10-90% of the tasks that had to be handled by a bureaucratic bottleneck can be delegated to computers (eg, those that invoke research, retrieval, reading, writing, and 'reasoning' [in quotes because I know someone will get pedantic about this]) and that wages will need to be phased out as a norm, substituted with shared upside/downside economic incentives that align the uncertainty-reducing, shaped-like-a-flexible-network unified goals of the 21st c. corporation with those of its individual contributors; and
commitment to outcomes over proceduralism: risk management and reliability still matter (in fact, trust and reputation-like human attention-will be relatively more scarce in the context of AI), but reducing risk shouldn't be a function of a compliance officer's continuous monitoring, burying innovators with paperwork and process, or centralized and rigid legal/sec/IT/procurement departments crying out "NO!" in unison-it should be managed through more sophisticated terms with customers, new "insurance" products, and shared responsibility (and immediate, sharp accountability) for all involved. Many of the "search," negotiating, contracting, monitoring, verification, and enforcement tasks can be delegated to computers.
These are the things you should be thinking about; not, "how can I fully automate existing process X?
If you're a CEO who's ready to lead your team 'cross the AI Rubicon (and the bigger your enterprise, the more pain you're likely to feel if you don't), let's talk.
*Gemini 2.5 Pro-recommended "translation": You'll reduce risk. Think of AI as a powerful radar for finding hidden opportunities. It can scan every email, meeting transcript, and customer chat to spot chances for you to make small, smart bets with huge potential upsides. This is how you'll grow and innovate without having to add the layers of slow, costly management that defined the last century.