Erik Shear
2w ago
Welcome to my little corner of the universe.
3 Reasons Your AI Investment Is A Glorified Science Project
1. You bought the promise, not the outcome.
You didn't buy a solution to a business problem; you bought a press release for the board and a headache for your ops team.
In the rush to "do something with AI," executives chase vague promises of efficiency and headcount reduction without defining a single concrete outcome. Instead of solving a specific bottleneck, they hand out licenses like party favors and throw a giant AI hootenanny—hoping employees magically stumble into a high-ROI use case so leadership can feature them in the next town hall. Hope is not a deployment strategy.
2. You didn't map the deployment journey end to end.
Congratulations. You bought a Formula 1 car, forgot to hire a pit crew, and parked it on a dirt road.
Enterprise tech is still full of old-school hardware sellers who treat professional services like a tax on the deal rather than the engine that makes it work. If you buy into that mindset, you’re doomed. Getting from Point A to Point B isn't just about installing software—it’s about mapping the entire operational journey and aligning every person who has to touch the tool to make it succeed. Without an implementation roadmap, even the best tech stalls out in the garage.
3. You don't understand how the work gets done.
When the Bobs asked, "What would you say you do here?" in Office Space, it was comedy. When you can't answer that about the team you're trying to automate, it's an expensive disaster.
You’ve fallen for one of the classic blunders: right behind "never get involved in a land war in Asia" is trying to automate a workflow you haven't bothered to map. On a slide deck, it sounds easy: "Let's automate technical scoping so sales can do it without engineers and hand it straight to delivery!"
In reality, once you're mid-deployment, the unmapped edge cases blow the whole thing up. By then, it’s too late to fix. You’re left with disrupted teams, six-figure shelfware, and a pink slip for whoever championed the deal.
The technology doesn't deliver the outcome. Implementation does.
Erik Shear