Making It Work

A Realistic AI Strategy for Small and Mid-Sized Businesses

De: Neil Addison

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

You have been told you need an AI strategy. The people telling you this have never run a business like yours.

The vendor presentations assume clean data you don't have. The conference case studies describe companies nothing like yours. The books are either breathlessly enthusiastic or relentlessly tactical — 50 prompts, 100 tools, none of them starting from the business you actually run. The maturity models were designed for enterprises with IT departments. The transformation roadmaps assume a project team you cannot spare.

Making It Work starts from the other end. Not from the technology. From your business.

Inside, you'll find:

• The Business Reality Audit — a five-lens framework for seeing your firm clearly: where your time goes, where your information lives, where your money goes, where your risks sit, and where your people are
• A readiness filter for evaluating any AI tool against the reality of your firm — not against a demonstration, a case study, or a competitor's claims
• An honest chapter on the staff conversation — the hardest part of AI adoption for most business owners, given a full chapter because it deserves one
• A three-phase implementation plan built from your own starting point, moving at a pace your business can absorb
• A chapter on what to ignore — the urgency, the maturity models, the comprehensive strategies, the vendor comparisons, and the predictions that may save you more money than all the other chapters combined

This book was written for the owner-manager of a 25-person firm — the person who is the IT department, the change management team, and the strategic planning function, all before lunch. It respects your intelligence, your constraints, and your time. No vendor relationships shaped its recommendations. No affiliate arrangements influenced its advice.

The principle that runs through every chapter: commit to tools slowly, commit to skills quickly. The tools will change. The capacity to evaluate, adopt, and adapt will not.

Neil Addison is the author of The Next Move: An Honest Guide to AI and Your Career and writes about AI strategy for working professionals and SMEs through You & AI (youandai.help), an independent venture with no vendor relationships or affiliate arrangements.