Choose one boring, repetitive, draining workflow with clear boundaries.
It starts with "We need an AI strategy." Many of these projects produce a document…then nothing happens. AI is a function, like "software" or "marketing." A function has no scope, no owner, and no success metrics. The project never finishes, fading to black over time..
Ask your team 3 questions: what takes too long, what gets repeated, what nobody can find.
Capture hours per month, dollars saved, or number of complaints. If you can't put a number on it, that's a problem all by itself.
Summarize a long thread of emails. The invoice workflow pays. Customer Service closes the case.
Identify one person whose week gets better when this works. Bonus points if the employee is an internal influencer.
Why the first project should be small enough to be unimpressive. Describe the problem in a sentence, add the number it costs today, assess the number it should be, and name the person who owns it.
☐ You can describe the problem in one sentence without using the word AI
☐ One person owns it, by name
☐ There's a metric attached, even an educated guess
☐ Someone's week gets measurably better
☐ You'd still want it fixed if AI didn't exist