It is a story you see on social media and experience firsthand on the job. A company had invested a significant amount of capital into a new AI-powered platform meant to revolutionize its customer service or internal processes. The sales pitch was incredible, promising predictive insights and automated workflows that would free up his team for more important tasks.
Six months in? The results were… underwhelming. The AI was spitting out nonsensical recommendations, workflows were breaking, and teams were spending more time fixing the “automation” than they were saving. Isn’t AI supposed to be the answer?
It’s a story I’m hearing more and more across Metropolitan Detroit. In a region built on innovation and industrial prowess, we’re all eager to grab onto the next technological leap. However, many businesses are discovering that bolting AI onto their existing operations is akin to attaching a rocket engine to a rusty bicycle. The power is there, but the framework can’t handle it. The problem isn’t the AI; it’s the process it’s built upon.
The Friction Before the Polish
There’s an old proverb that says, “A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.”
This is the perfect metaphor for preparing a business for artificial intelligence. So many leaders want the polished gem—the seamless, intelligent, self-running operation—without enduring the necessary friction of analysis and refinement. They skip the hard “trials” of digging into their own workflows, identifying bottlenecks, and questioning legacy habits.
When a company introduces AI into a chaotic or inefficient environment, the technology doesn’t fix the chaos. It amplifies it. It automates bad habits, makes faster mistakes, and shines a glaring spotlight on the cracks in the foundation.
Are You Making These Common AI-Readiness Mistakes?
Many businesses across Southeast Michigan (Troy and Southfield to Farmington Hills, Novi, and Northville), from the manufacturing floors in Warren to the tech startups in downtown Detroit, jump into AI for the wrong reasons. They often see it as a magic wand rather than a powerful tool that requires a skilled operator and a prepared workspace.
Without a solid foundation of Business Process Optimization (BPO), companies often experience:
- Flawed Data, Flawed Results: AI learns from your data. If your data entry is inconsistent, incomplete, or stored across disconnected systems, the AI’s output will be unreliable at best.
- Automating Inefficiency: If your current sales process has five unnecessary steps, an AI tool will just execute those five unnecessary steps at lightning speed, creating waste instead of value.
- Employee Resistance: When a new tool creates more problems than it solves, your team will rightfully reject it. This happens when the AI wasn’t designed to solve a clearly understood and streamlined workflow.
- Wasted Investment: The ultimate result is a costly piece of software that gets ignored, draining your budget and morale.
Your Blueprint for Success: Polishing Your Detroit Business for AI
Before you even request a demo for that shiny new AI platform, you need to apply some healthy friction. It’s about taking an honest and unflinching look at how your business actually operates day-to-day. This is the work we do with our clients across the Detroit area—turning their raw potential into a polished, high-performance operation.
Here’s how you can start:
- Map Your Core Processes: Get a whiteboard and physically draw out a key workflow. How does a lead become a client? How does an order get fulfilled? Involve the people who do the work every day. You will be shocked by the detours, redundancies, and “we’ve-always-done-it-this-way” habits you uncover.
- Identify the Friction Points: Where do things get stuck? What requires constant manual intervention? Where do mistakes most often happen? These are your opportunities for improvement and the exact spots where technology might eventually help.
- Streamline and Standardize: Eliminate redundant steps. Establish a standard, documented procedure for performing a task. This phase alone often brings a massive return on investment, long before any AI is introduced. It builds a clean, efficient engine for your business.
- Target Technology Strategically: Now that you have a clean, polished process, you can clearly see where AI or automation can provide the most value. Do you need an AI chatbot to handle initial inquiries in your now-standardized sales funnel? Or perhaps an AI tool to analyze clean and reliable inventory data?
The spirit of Metropolitan Detroit is one of resilience and masterful engineering. We don’t just build things; we build them to last. Apply that same ethos to your business operations. By embracing the friction of process optimization, you’re not just preparing for AI—you’re building a stronger, more efficient, and more profitable company from the ground up.
AI isn’t just about technology — it’s about processes. As your Fractional COO, we’ll help you streamline workflows, reduce inefficiencies, and integrate AI into your daily operations without disrupting your team. Book a consultation and learn how operational excellence can unlock AI’s full potential.