Spraying GenAI Everywhere? Try This First

Everyone’s asking: How can we use GenAI to grow faster? Sell more? Keep customers longer?

Here’s the thing—rolling out GenAI across your business isn’t just about flipping a switch. It’s messy. There’s uncertainty. You’ll try things that don’t work. You’ll learn. You’ll adjust.

In other words​​, it’s precisely the kind of challenge that benefits from an agile, experimental mindset—not just for building products, but for building how your company operates.

I see too many companies spraying GenAI around like fertilizer, hoping something sprouts. A better approach? Slow down.

First, take a hard look at the bottlenecks in your business—the critical processes that waste time, drain energy, or block growth.

Those are the areas where AI might actually move the needle.

Eliyahu Goldratt, the creator of the Theory of Constraints, made the point bluntly: an hour lost at the bottleneck is lost by the whole system. An hour saved away from the bottleneck may not matter at all.

But even when focusing on the bottleneck, don’t rush to plug in a shiny AI tool.

First, implement some basic process improvements. Tighten things up. Clarify how the work should flow. Once you’ve got something stable and sensible, then you can ask, “How might GenAI help us do this faster or better?”