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How good AI plans die quietly by summer.

“We need to be AI-ready by year-end,” the CEO announced in January.
By March, the ‘AI Innovation Task Force’ was born.
By summer, it had disappeared. Quietly.

Sound familiar? It should. This has played out in hundreds of companies since 2024 or thereabouts. What it has left behind is frustrated staff, sunk time, and leaders scratching their heads about why nothing ever landed.

Let's do a deep dive into the AI taskforce trap.

The Echo Chamber problem

Who gets picked?

Most task forces are built with good intentions… and the wrong mix of people.

You usually get:

Techies excited to try things (but not always close to the problems)
“Innovation champions” who’ve seen all the demos
Business stakeholders who didn’t volunteer, but were volunteered

They’re smart, curious, and genuinely want to help.
But they’re often too far from day-to-day pain points to make AI useful, not just impressive.

What actually happens?

Week 1: “Look what GPT-03 can do!” (Half an hour of ChatGPT tricks)
Week 3: “I found another tool we should try!” (Still no business context)
Week 6: “Should we look at agents?” (No use case, but lots of excitement)
Week 10: “Maybe we should define success…” (Energy is there, but structure isn't)

Three Patterns That Kill Progress

🛠 The Tool Parade
Everyone’s chasing the next AI tool. No one is delivering anything of meaningful value to the business.

📊 The Metrics Mirage
“94% model accuracy!” Great. But does it help anyone make better decisions?

🔁 Pilot Purgatory
Endless proof-of-concepts. No one asks: should we scale this?

The Alternative: Business First. Always.

Forget “What can AI do?”
Start with: “What problem are we solving?”

What we cover in our training programmes:

1.Business-first thinking

Start with real pain points. Map the process. Pick measurable goals.

2.Proper stakeholder alignment

Train the people doing the work, not just those managing the tools. Help teams design smarter ways of working with AI, not around it. Keep the focus on real outcomes - not just learning new features.

3.Start with a small cohort

Bring together a mixed group: one part enthusiasts, one part sceptics. Give them business-focused AI training. Make it practical. Keep it grounded. Then step back… and watch what happens.

Real talk

Innovative companies that work with us don’t just avoid the task force trap - they turn AI into a competitive edge. Because when you start with business outcomes, AI isn’t a shiny distraction. It’s how you get there faster.

Techies don’t get the business.
Business people don’t always get the tech.
The result? Big dreams. No delivery.

🪦 There are already graveyards full of good AI ideas.
Don’t let your organisation bury another one.

Groupthink: The Kill Switch for Critical Thinking

Once the group decides AI is the answer, you’re not allowed to ask the question.

Want help turning one of your pilot projects into something people actually use?
Hit reply — or forward this to someone stuck in week 6, wondering what happened to all that momentum.

Take action : Google’s new AI policy

Last week, Android users got an email. Buried in the fine print: Google’s Gemini AI will soon scan your apps — including WhatsApp — even if you’ve turned activity tracking off.

Yes, really.

Here’s what’s actually happening:

• Your preferences are being ignored.
• Gemini can read your messages, calls, and app data by default. Including Whatsapp, allegedly encrypted, but we know not.
• You didn’t say yes. You just weren’t given a way to say no.

Here’s how to stop it:

Open the Gemini app
Tap Profile → Apps
Manually disable access to Phone, Messages, WhatsApp and Utilities

Every toggle is switched ON by default — even if you've opted out before.

It only takes a minute, and it’s worth doing if you’d rather keep your content out of Google’s AI training data.

Now on Chatting GPT

This week, Stephanie Prenderville - transformation consultant and change management guru - joined Maryrose to unpack what the future looks like for people and change.

The two played out an imaginary scenario where it's 2030 and Stephanie was reporting in to Maryrose on how the last 5 years had played out. Fun and interesting, you will learn from Stephanie who shared her “messy beginning” philosophy: that progress starts when you stop waiting for perfect plans.

Explore Chatting GPT

Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
PS - if you like it, please tell somebody. We're in a big growth spurt with podcast listeners!

What We're Consuming This Week

💸Cloudflare Launches Pay-Per-Crawl for AI Bots
In an interesting move, Cloudflare is creating a new marketplace for creators to charge AI bots for consuming their content.Pay-per-crawl is a bold move to create a marketplace where content creators get paid for their work.

🔥 Future of Professionals Report 2025
Thomson Reuters surveyed 1,200+ professionals on how AI and automation are reshaping legal, tax, and compliance work. It confirms what we’ve been seeing across our client work:

Leaders who live AI — not just talk about it — see faster, better results
Top-down vision is good, but bottom-up change wins every time
And the teams that embed AI into daily work (not just strategy decks) pull ahead