Are you chasing AI gains with a blindfold on?

Many companies are sprinting towards AI implementation, but it feels like some are doing so with the wrong lens. When the projects fail, or never show the success everyone expected, it may be time to reconsider the approach.

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I might be biased, but I believe we need to change how we identify AI opportunities. What I see is initiatives driven by technical fascination rather than a concrete business problem, or a blind reliance on data from process mining. If you are only looking at your dashboards, you aren’t seeing the whole truth. Data is a powerful tool, but it has one significant limitation: it only tells you what is happening inside your systems. It cannot tell you where your employees are struggling, or where they have built invisible workarounds to get past a broken process.

The digital blind spot: the Iceberg of Ignorance

In leadership we often talk about the ”Iceberg of Ignorance”. In the context of AI and automation, the metaphor is more relevant than ever:

• The tip of the iceberg (20%): These are the processes management can see. They show up in your KPIs, ERP systems and log files. It is where most people start their AI journey.
• Below the surface (80%): This is where the real work happens. It is the informal routines, the manual ”workarounds” and the invisible bottlenecks that never leave a digital footprint.

If you only automate the top 20%, you are leaving the majority of your potential ROI under the surface, in the 80% your employees handle manually every single day.

Why the most successful projects flip the iceberg

The most successful AI initiatives I have seen do the exact opposite of the top-down approach. They start with the people who actually have their hands on the keyboard every day. By giving your employees a voice in the automation journey, you gain two critical advantages:

1. Business value over tech enthusiasm

When you listen to the people doing the work, you stop automating for the sake of automation. Instead you identify the processes that actually free up time and create tangible business value. You solve real-world problems rather than technical curiosities.

2. Ownership over resistance

Let’s be honest: AI can be intimidating. When a solution is forced from the top down, it often meets resistance. But when employees are the ones pointing at the busy work they want to get rid of, fear turns into empowerment. It is no longer about being replaced, it is about being unburdened, so you can focus on the work that genuinely needs human insight.

The bridge between data and reality

I have made it my speciality to build the bridge between the technology and the people. The best automation opportunities sit in the overlap between what the data shows and what your employees experience.

In a Commercial Business Review I use intelligent AI interviews, among other things, to gather your employees’ knowledge systematically and efficiently. That allows me to:

• Uncover the hidden 80% of the iceberg.
• Build a prioritised, executable roadmap of business-critical initiatives.
• Make sure the chosen solutions have full backing from the people who have to use them.

I might be biased, but I have yet to see a data analysis that beats the value of listening to the collective experience of the organisation.

Are you ready to look beneath the surface of your own business?

Read more about Commercial Business Review, where the four lenses are used to find the opportunities that matter most financially.

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