#523 How To Get Your Organisation AI-ready: Why Strategy Beats Trial and Error | Niels Brabandt
How To Get Your Organisation AI-ready: Why Strategy Beats Trial and Error
Article by Niels Brabandt
Artificial Intelligence is no longer a future debate. It is a present reality. Yet, while many organisations acknowledge that AI has arrived, surprisingly few are asking the right question. The discussion is no longer whether organisations should use AI. The question is how organisations implement AI responsibly, strategically, and sustainably.
In this week’s leadership podcast and videocast, leadership expert Niels Brabandt explores one of the defining business questions of our time: How does an organisation become genuinely AI-ready?
For many organisations, AI adoption has begun informally. Employees experiment with tools such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Claude, or Gemini, often without formal guidance, governance, or strategic oversight. Some leaders still believe restricting access will solve the matter. However, the reality is considerably more complex. Employees who cannot access tools via corporate systems frequently use personal devices instead. AI usage is already happening. Leadership must therefore shift from resistance to responsible implementation.
There are, undeniably, substantial opportunities. One striking example demonstrates how AI can strengthen workplace communication. An employee known for emotionally charged emails began using AI to rewrite messages during moments of frustration. The result was immediate and measurable: improved communication, fewer interpersonal conflicts, and stronger professional relationships. Here, AI became an enabler of emotional intelligence and conflict management.
Yet, as Niels Brabandt highlights, there is another side to the equation. In one organisation, AI was tasked with automatically assigning customs tariff codes across more than 40,000 product entries. The work was completed in minutes. Unfortunately, accuracy proved catastrophic. Significant errors triggered regulatory investigations, financial penalties, and organisational consequences. The explanation that “AI made the mistake” carried no legal weight. Accountability remained firmly with the organisation.
This moment is precisely where leadership matters.
Becoming AI-ready begins with professional evaluation. Before implementation, leaders must first understand organisational demand, concerns, knowledge gaps, and practical use cases. Anonymous employee surveys frequently reveal strong interest in AI training, particularly when psychological safety exists and employees feel comfortable admitting limited expertise.
Equally important is implementation design. One of the most overlooked factors in successful AI adoption is the learning environment itself. Organisations frequently attempt to save costs by placing operational staff, IT professionals, senior leadership teams, and board members into one training room. Predictably, participation declines. Employees with limited AI confidence rarely ask questions when senior decision-makers or technical specialists are present.
Safe spaces matter.
People require environments where they can ask fundamental questions without fear of judgement. AI literacy does not emerge through intimidation or embarrassment. It emerges through trust, structured learning, and psychological safety.
Another common leadership mistake concerns delivery. Many organisations assume internal IT teams can automatically lead AI training simply because they possess technical expertise. However, technical competence and professional facilitation are not the same capability. Just as external consultants should not claim to understand internal infrastructure better than internal teams, internal specialists should not automatically be expected to deliver learning experiences without professional preparation.
Successful AI readiness depends upon professional implementation, clear governance, structured education, and continuous professional development.
Perhaps most importantly, leaders must recognise that not everyone will become an AI champion. Some employees will embrace AI enthusiastically. Others will do only the minimum required. Sustainable leadership does not force enthusiasm. It creates systems where development is continuously supported, expectations are transparent, and employees feel invested in.
AI readiness is not a technology challenge. It is a leadership challenge.
The organisations that succeed will not necessarily be those with the largest budgets or the most advanced software. They will be the organisations led by decision-makers who understand that sustainable transformation requires evaluation, professional implementation, psychological safety, and continuous development.
The future of leadership will belong to those who do not simply adopt AI, but implement it wisely.
For further leadership insights, scientific research, keynote speaking, training, coaching, consulting, and organisational transformation support, visit Niels Brabandt via NB-Networks.biz.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
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Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
AI is here. The question is, how is your organization able to adapt? And I mean, how do you actually get AI into the organization? Of course, some people might now say, "Hey, we just rolled it out. There was Copilot, there was ChatGPT, there was Claude, whatever you picked, and we just rolled it out. People did it from there. People just did trial and error, and then it worked. Amazing. However, is this really a wise choice?" We are going to talk about specific examples where things got really well, worked well, and where, let's say, things didn't go too well. So welcome to this week's episode. We are going to talk about how to get your organization AI ready.
Niels Brabandt
The main issue here is often the discussion and how it is conducted, especially in certain entities, not only in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, but also in the UK, France, or Spain. When you see that some organizations still say, "Well, we have to talk about if AI is a good fit." Okay, here are the news. That is not part of the discussion anymore. The question, if you want to use AI, when you are on that stage, when you are at the stage of thinking, "Should we use AI?" And I know that especially public service is extremely, extremely careful about using AI. It's a wise choice to be careful how to handle data with especially, let's say, foreign-based software infrastructure where you're sometimes even not allowed to upload the data just for trial purposes. However, not using AI at all for the tiniest thing then may not be the best pick here, and also may not be the reasonable choice within the boundaries you already have.
Niels Brabandt
So when you say, "We're not sure if we use AI at all," then you really have to see that is not the approach we can take. The question, if, is decided. We have to use it. It is a tool that is useful. The question is, how do you use it? Not if. And often companies simply take the approach, "Hey, look, people just use it anyway. It's on the Internet, so they can use it anytime." Trial and error. And by the way, if anyone else says, "Look, our people can't use it. We just block ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini and whatnot else," here are the news. People just take their smartphones. They take their smartphones. They upload the files. They upload the data, and they send it from their smartphone via email to their corporate inbox. So you will not prevent people from using AI if you want it or not.
Niels Brabandt
And of course, some people say, "Hey, trial and error might work." I give you an example where it worked amazingly well. One person said, who was known to write, let's say, in critical moments, writing rather angry emails that often ruffled some feathers. And people said, "This really needs to stop." And as soon as AI came in, this person said, "Every single time I feel that I'm really getting angry, I write the email, then I ask Copilot to rewrite it in a certain way, and I send the email that Copilot suggested me to send." And these emails are way better. That's what the person said. So we asked the people, and the people said, "Oh, we already wondered why suddenly he is so much more polite. We thought he got a coaching." No, it wasn't a coaching. Well, he got a coaching as well, but the coaching was a coaching by someone who said, "You can also use AI," and that's what he then did. So we see that trial and error may work. Sometimes people find out things just by coincidence, and it worked tremendously well.
Niels Brabandt
In another situation, however, things didn't go too well. What happened there was some person found out, "Oh, actually, Copilot can even integrate data and fill out Microsoft Excel sheets." So what the person did was the person said, "Look, we have a list of products to be shipped by tomorrow, and this is a list of custom codes which you used to have custom border control. You have to pay a certain tariff on it, maybe, and there are tariff codes which need to be used. Could you just check and fill out every single tariff code in this file where we have more than 40,000 lines to be filled out?" And Copilot said, "Yeah, just did it. Here is the final file. It's all filled out." And the person thought, "Oh, wow, that is amazing." Well, a couple of weeks later turned out it wasn't too amazing. I mean, it's amazing when Copilot filled out the whole file very quickly within one or two minutes. You know what's even more amazing, or would be more amazing, if Copilot did it the right way? There were countless errors in the list, and when you are wrong on tariff numbers, and of course by coincidence in your favor, then authorities are not too soft on you.
Niels Brabandt
And of course, immediately the person, as well as the organization, said, "It wasn't us. It was AI." And let's just put it that way. They couldn't care less. They simply said, "It is your accountability, your responsibility, your accountability to get the tariff code right." And you didn't get it right. And that's why we will hold you and no one else accountable for what has happened right here, right now, today. And from there it became really bad with a massive fine, other consequences. The person had to declare themselves. They had an official investigation against the organization, against the person, the whole lot. So you see there are lots of potentials. However, there are also risks connected with it.
Niels Brabandt
The question now is, how do you actually get AI into your organization? Simply trial and error will not work. The situation is the following. You need to have a very good evaluation. So, for example, a survey amongst your people, your employees, anyone working for you, and asking them, "What do you actually want?" And very important now is you will see quite a demand because, especially with anonymous surveys, people open up. When you do it name by name, people will not open up for obvious reasons, because they do not want to be called out for their non-knowledge of AI.
Niels Brabandt
And after the evaluation, the implementation needs to be in so-called safe spaces. Safe spaces means that you put people together in learning groups. I can give you a very simple example. I got my education from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton Business School regarding AI. That's a reasonably good organization. It's the number one business school worldwide at the moment, and it's a leading scientific entity on the matter. So this implementation often starts with, often when I'm called in as an AI trainer, it starts with how to prompt properly. That is the usual three-hour standard class where everything begins with. So the implementation means that we need to start with that as well, because people often don't know how to prompt well.
Niels Brabandt
However, now the part begins where people say, "Oh, let's save some money," and then someone says, "Let's just put them all in one room." So you have people from operational level, someone from the production facilities, someone from IT, someone from the board, someone from the senior leadership team, and they are all sitting in one room. And miracle or miracle, the only people who could have thought who are asking questions are the leaders and the IT people. People are aware that AI is a thing, and they are also aware of the fact that they should know something about that. However, when they know that their knowledge is, let's say, rather mediocre, they will not open up in a non-safe space. And of course, I know what's coming up now.
Niels Brabandt
Someone says, "Oh, yeah, in general, that's correct." But you know we all have such a great relationship in our organization. We just all love each other. People always open up, "Look, not about this. Not about this." I've been there hundreds of times where someone said, "Let's save a coin. Put everyone just in one room, 100 people." People just sit there, look at it, absolutely astonished. You see in their faces how they have a million questions, but they're not going to ask a single one because just behind them is the senior leadership team and the board and the IT, and they do not want to look like the clueless ones.
Niels Brabandt
You need to have groups. A certain difference within a group is always manageable. However, people need spaces where they are safe to ask questions which they feel are, let's say, rather simple, but for them really important. So the implementation needs to be started well. It needs to be structured, and then it needs to be ongoing, which is perfectly fine. It can be done, for example, by your internal IT people. They can support from there because they probably can help with the ongoing matter of what's happening in a day-to-day business.
Niels Brabandt
However, with the implementation, I see one error coming up again and again, and that is people do not stick to professional services. I give you a very simple example. If you have an ache in one of your teeth, where do you go? To the dentist. Why? Because these are professional services. When someone says, "Hey, look, I read a lot about teeth, and you know I did this YouTube class, and I have lots of books about teeth at home, and I think I have a bit of equipment. Maybe I can help you as well," you would not in a million years consider that a viable option. By the way, rightfully so.
Niels Brabandt
However, at the same time, we see organizations telling IT people, "Hey, look, you do IT, so you do the AI training." And then even often, quite often, IT people come up and say, "Hey, I'm not a professional trainer, speaker, coach, consultant, mentor, project interim manager. I'm an IT expert on Exchange Server or SQL databases or Oracle administration." And then someone from management says, "Look, it's just people. Take a PowerPoint slide and then just talk them through." And then you have one of these, "I read you. I read you some PowerPoint slide kind of training." These people have never been professionally qualified to do training, coaching, or anything near it. And then you wonder why their approach to knowledge transfer isn't too successful.
Niels Brabandt
I, as an external person, cannot administer your internal IT as good as your IT people can, obviously, and I will not claim to do so because they are the internal professional service for that. However, I am definitely better in delivering AI training as I am an experienced, longstanding trainer, speaker, coach, consulting, project interim manager. And when you don't see that and you say, "Oh, no, it's always the internal people. They're not qualified for training, but they do training now," do not be surprised that the effect of that will be the adverse one.
Niels Brabandt
People will show resistance, saying, "Okay, the organization is not investing. They want to save a coin, and when they save a coin, I save the effort, so I'm not going to do everything. I'm not going to do anything." When you have professional service in place, then very important is after the delivery, you have to see, "How can we evaluate from here?" And you will have some AI champions where you say they are absolutely on fire. They love it. They want to implement more. Pick them and do more with them, with the IT and your internal people. You don't need any external people from here unless you want something very specific or ongoing where they then can help again. But usually you can go by yourself from here. It's a very tiny investment in the first place to ignite that fire by someone who's truly professionally qualified on the matter.
Niels Brabandt
And this evaluation will tell you who are the champions, but also who are the ones who do the bare minimum. And very important, you have to accept that as well. You cannot force people to become AI champions. You can force them and say, "That is the minimum of AI usage we expect," and they will do so, but they will always do the bare minimum. What you really have to invest into is that this kind of knowledge, no matter if it's AI knowledge or leadership knowledge, project management, anything about that, you need to have a continuous professional development.
Niels Brabandt
And the continuous professional development means that people know, "I get this training. I maybe get that coaching, but there's always help available on the internal matters with maybe the internal IT, on the other matters, maybe with an external person coming in, but we always know someone's investing in us." And then people will be open-minded and say, "Hey, let's all do this together." And when you do it the way we just discussed it right here, then it's going to be a massive success in your organization. I wish you all the best implementing that in exactly the place where you work right now. And when you say, "I think I have anything in between 2 to 48 questions right now," very important, contact me anytime.
Niels Brabandt
So first, of course, when you now watch this on YouTube, feel free to leave a like here. Thank you very much for doing so. Of course, subscribe to the channel, and of course, leave a comment here. I'm looking forward to our discussions. When you now say, "Hey, I'm actually listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify," thank you very much for leaving five stars. We put a lot of effort into this. This is all founded in science, lots of research, and I offer all of that for free. So I'm looking forward to seeing your review. Thank you very much for leaving five stars here.
Niels Brabandt
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Niels Brabandt
One additional aspect which we have: when you subscribe to the YouTube channel, put the little bell in there because we have one thing since the beginning of this year. I promised this year there will be at least one leadership tip per day via the so-called YouTube Shorts. As the name says, the YouTube Shorts are available only on YouTube. Short video, 30 to 60 seconds. There is one short YouTube tip either by me or an external expert I brought in every single day of the year. So far we are doing very well there. Thank you very much for the positive feedback as well. I'm looking forward to seeing you on there. So it really pays off to put the little bell in there because when you only subscribe, you might miss something new. When you put the little bell on there, it also means you get a short notification on your smartphone where you simply get to know now something new is on, and you do not miss anything.
Niels Brabandt
Of course, you can also follow me on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I'm looking forward to hearing from you and seeing you on there.
Niels Brabandt
And when you now say, "Hey, we need a professional trainer, speaker, coach, consultant, mentor, project interim manager regarding soft skills or AI sales training," just please contact me. I'm doing this for a long time now. NB-Networks.biz is my website. Looking forward to seeing you visiting it. And of course, you can drop me an email, NB@NB-Networks.com, and no worries. No matter on which channel you contact me, I answer every single message within 24 hours or less. Meaning, if you don't have an answer within 24 hours, maybe your message ended up in spam. Maybe then contact me on another channel. I'm going to give you a couple of choices just in about a minute.
Niels Brabandt
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Niels Brabandt
And of course, when you now like to connect with me, feel free to connect on either LinkedIn, follow me, or maybe properly connect. Don't do the follow. Connect with me properly. I'm looking forward to hearing from you there. You can follow me on Instagram. You can, of course, leave a like on Facebook, and you can, of course, subscribe properly to the YouTube channel. Then you have it all. I'm looking forward to seeing from you there. And no worries. When you contact me, answer within 24 hours is guaranteed. Any kind of feedback is always appreciated. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Niels Brabandt
At the end of this podcast, there's always the most important thing to say: apply, apply, apply what you learned here, because only when you apply what you learned, you will see the positive outcomes that you obviously want to see in your organization. I wish you all the best doing so. Thank you very much again for tuning in today. And at the end of this podcast, as well as at the end of this video cast, there's only one thing left for me to say: thank you very much for your time.