Don’t Waste Your Money on AI
Until You Answer this One Question
A client of mine was telling me about a colleague at their company. This colleague had been struggling with her workflow for months, so the company did something generous: they built her a custom platform. Not an off-the-shelf tool. Custom-made, just for her.
She barely used it. And when I learned more, I didn’t blame her.
Why? Because nobody actually sat down with her first to understand what was slowing her down. Someone assumed they knew the problem, built a solution for it, and handed it over. Turns out the assumption was wrong. The platform solved a problem she didn't really have, while the actual bottleneck, the thing eating her time every single day, was still sitting there untouched.
Sound familiar?
We Keep Solving the Wrong Problem
Implementing new technology is on every leader's mind right now. AI tools, new platforms, system overhauls, it's constant. And yet the data keeps telling us the same uncomfortable story: the tools aren't landing. Enterprises lost over $104 million in 2024 alone to underutilized technology, and while 79% of executives are confident in their AI transformation goals, just 25% say those tools actually make their work more efficient, according to WalkMe's State of Digital Adoption report.
That's not an adoption problem. That's a value problem.
The issue with most new technologies is they don't eliminate work; they relocate it. The task someone was already doing gets moved into a new interface, dressed up with dashboards and automation language, and handed back to them as an "upgrade." Centralization. Data analysis. Visibility. All real business benefits for leadership. For the person actually doing the work? It's a new login, a new set of clicks, and a learning curve they didn't ask for.
We do this as consumers too. Your favorite app rolls out a redesign, and your first reaction isn't gratitude, it's mild rage. Where did the button go? Why does this take three taps now instead of one? We don't resent change. We resent change that doesn't make our lives easier. Employees feel the exact same way about the tools we hand them at work.
Read More: Your Strategy Is Great; Your Organization Can’t Execute It
The Fix Isn't a Bigger Budget. It's a Better Conversation.
When it comes to innovation, most companies get backwards: they treat internal tech decisions as a technology problem, so they go find the flashiest technology. But the real question was never "what's the best platform on the market." It's "what is actually slowing this person down, in their own words."
That's not a new idea. It's the exact same methodology we use to help clients build new products and services for their customers. You don't guess what customers want and build it in a vacuum. You talk to them. You dig into their unmet needs, their frustrations, the workaround they've quietly built because the real solution doesn't exist yet. Then you build something that solves that specific problem. That's innovation at its core: creating and capturing new value by solving a problem that was actually there.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped applying that same discipline internally. We'll spend weeks interviewing customers before a product launch, then roll out a six figure internal platform based on a hunch from a leadership meeting. If your colleague, your ops team, or your frontline staff could tell you exactly where they're losing time every day, wouldn't you want to know that before you bought the fix?
That colleague my client told me about? Nobody asked her what was actually broken. Once we did, we were able to make the chance in a matter of days and now she’s using the platform daily.
Gallup's research backs this up at scale: employees who have real influence over how new technology gets introduced report meaningfully higher job satisfaction than those who just get handed a rollout schedule. Ask the people doing the work what's actually slow, clunky, or painful before you buy them a solution. Half the time, they'll tell you exactly where the real value is hiding.
Are You Asking the Right Questions
New technology isn't the enemy. Building it backwards is. The difference between a tool that gets adopted and one that quietly gets ignored usually comes down to one thing: whether it was built to solve a real, specific problem employees actually named, or built to look impressive in a board meeting.
Are you driving real value for employees? Let's find out. A Tech & AI Opportunity Scan is a fast, focused look at your tools and systems to identify exactly where new value creation and growth opportunity are hiding, and where you're paying for platforms nobody's really using. Book a call to get your free scan.
