The single biggest mistake in AI and automation strategy is ignoring your employees. I was chatting with a CEO last week and she said, "We've invested millions in tech, but our employees barely use it beyond basic tasks." Here's what I told her: Focus on improving processes, not just adding tech. The idea of "implementing AI and automation" feels a bit disconnected and overwhelming. "Oh we need to adopt new tech to stay competitive and boost our ROI." Or, "We better use AI so our investors see we're innovative." Meh. That's not very motivating, for you or your team. Instead, think about specific work problems you can solve. Like: "We should use auto-categorise support tickets — it will cut response times in half and save our support team hours of frustration." That's already such a better mindset to approach tech adoption from. Employees gravitate towards tools that make their lives easier. So if you're pushing AI and automation "cuz we need to innovate" it'll come across like you don't understand their day-to-day struggles. Similarly, if you impose tech use cuz "we want to be seen as a leader" it'll come across as disconnected and unrelatable. But if you're focusing on pain points, productivity gains, and ultimately the WHY behind each integration (the thing that'll make their work better), people will feel the impact and be far more open to embracing and learning the new tech. A few simple thought exercises to help: - Identify repetitive tasks in current workflows - How AI and automation could improve these processes - Why this matters for individual roles - Why the team should care about these improvements - The practical benefits they'll experience day-to-day If you don't have strong answers to those questions, you may need to rethink your strategy, or else it'll keep feeling forced and disconnected.