How AI adds capacity in a volatile market

Running a small business today requires a different kind of stamina, especially now.  The market can change between the time you develop a plan and when you sit down to execute it. Costs move, customers change their priorities and employees have new expectations. Competition is coming from directions that weren’t on the radar five years ago. Through all of it, the owner is still expected to make it work.

I’ve always believed that one of the biggest advantages a small business has is its ability to move. I’ve made a decision on a Tuesday and implemented it by Friday. The challenge is that owners are often so buried in the day-to-day that they don’t have the time or mental bandwidth to take advantage of it.

I see an important opportunity with AI. To clarify, AI is not going to run your business and you don’t want it to either. I’m certainly not suggesting that every small business needs another dozen technology tools. What I am suggesting is much simpler: Use technology to get some capacity back to focus on what matters most when things are off kilter.

AI can help you avoid panic and reactive behavior by completing the work that consumes hours but doesn’t necessarily require hours of human thinking. It can help organize information, create a first draft and summarize material. It can also spot patterns and get you and your team from a blank page to a useful starting point.

Here are three things I encourage every small business owner to consider, especially in a volatile economy:

1.      Start with the bottleneck, not the technology

Something new comes along and the first question becomes, “How can I use it?” The smarter question is, “What is making running my business harder than it needs to be?”

Ask yourself:

• What repetitive tasks are you or your employees spending time on?
• Where are customers waiting for an answer?
• Where are you still doing something manually because “that’s the way we’ve always done it”?
• What are you spending your own time on that someone (or something) could help with?

Maybe it’s creating proposals, responding to routine customer questions, turning meeting notes into follow-up items or pulling information together for a meeting. You don’t have to transform the company overnight. Find one headache and work on that.

Action step: Pick one recurring task that takes at least a couple of hours a week. See if technology can reduce the time involved without reducing the quality of the result. If it works, keep it. If it doesn’t, move on.

2.      Get the owner out of the weeds and back into the business

This one is particularly important to me. Small business owners are problem solvers. That’s one of the reasons we started our businesses in the first place. But there’s a point where being the person who solves every problem becomes the problem. If the owner is spending all day answering routine emails, rewriting the same documents, or compiling information and chasing down details, when are they thinking about the business?

The important work like looking at your numbers, communicating with your best clients or creating new opportunities? You don’t want anything in the way of that.

Technology can help with some of the administrative load. But the real benefit isn’t saving 30 minutes writing an email, it’s what you do with the 30 minutes you get back.

Action step: Set aside one hour every week that you deliberately protect from operational work. Use technology to help prepare the information you need, then spend the hour thinking about the business rather than working through the task list.

3.      Keep the human being in the driver’s seat

Just because technology can do something doesn’t mean it should do it without you. AI can get things wrong and miss context. It doesn’t know your client. It especially doesn’t understand your business or your reputation. That’s why I believe the best approach for a small business is to use AI as an assistant, not as the decision-maker.

Let it give you a starting point, organize information and help you think through a problem. Have a person review important work, protect confidential information and establish basic rules for your employees. Most importantly, don’t outsource your judgment.

Action step: Create a simple set of rules for how your team will use AI.

• What information can be entered?
• What needs to be reviewed by a person?
• What decisions always require an owner or manager?

Making the rules simple enough will help people follow them.

Final thought: The point isn’t about AI, it’s about building a better business.

I think we’re going to look back at this period and realize that the biggest opportunity wasn’t any particular AI tool. It was the opportunity to rethink how we work.

You’ve got this!

Related: Why AI has yet to transform most MSPs