What do a traffic cone and an AI rollout have in common?

What do a half-flattened traffic cone and an enterprise AI tool rollout have in common?

As I was driving down Shawano Ave. in Green Bay today, tailing a logging truck through a construction zone, I found myself thinking about AI adoption.

The right lane was narrow — only a few inches wider than the trailer — and the driver was doing a decent job of navigating the space between the traffic cones and the curb. But every so often, one of the tires would clip a cone and reposition it.

On one of those occasions, the cone spun around, fell over in front of the trailer’s tires, and got flattened in front of me.

As I approached, the half-flattened cone lay across half of my lane, and I had to make a split-second decision:
1) Stop my car in the middle of the road, get out, and move the cone.
2) Drive over the curb and risk damaging my car.
3) Drive over the half-flattened cone.

If you’ve rolled out an enterprise AI tool at your organization, you might feel like you’ve got a half-flattened traffic cone in your way right now. You’re paying for the tool, but something is still diverting the value you expected to see.

At that point, you usually have three choices:
1) Stop everything and reimagine the rollout from scratch.
2) Jump the curb and switch paths entirely.
3) Continue forward, figure out what’s slowing people down, and clear the obstacle.

My advice? Drive over the cone. That’s usually the smartest move.

If you want to learn how to drive over the half-flattened cone in your own rollout, I’m hosting a free webinar this week on how to course-correct on AI adoption. You can sign up here, but hurry, registration closes soon.