What if we shifted our mindset around AI?
When I talk to clients, the number one thing on their minds is artificial intelligence. It’s in every roadmap, every mission statement, every agenda, every performance review. I even saw it on a water bottle label.
“Natural Spring water, infused with AI”.
Not really, but I bet you can see it, right!
Learning & Development teams are feeling pressure to upskill their workforce on how to use AI. Client facing teams are feeling pressure from their clients to figure out how they should be using AI. Leadership teams are conflicted about where to place focus and budget. People at every level of the organization are feeling it. It’s a race. For most companies, the starting line is in the form of investments, training, mandates or even job elimination. The desired finish lines include efficiency, faster times to market, higher margins, bigger innovations or just survival. The road in between is paved with conflict and uncertainty.
I believe that with a slight reframe of these challenges, clarity can be found.
What if we shifted our mindset from “What can we do with AI?” to “What problems or opportunities do we have?”
It seems small, but the words matter. “What can we do with AI?” starts with the solution and tries to work backwards into problems. “What can I do with a hammer?” starts with a solution and does the same. AI is infinitely more powerful and flexible than a hammer, but the principle still applies.
In April of 2025, Micha Kaufman, CEO of Fiverr sent an email to his employees.
“It does not matter if you are a programmer, designer, product manager, data scientist, lawyer, customer support rep, salesperson, or a finance person—AI is coming for you.”
AI will undoubtedly be able to do many of the jobs currently done by humans, but what if statements like this were problem focused? What is the current problem with the job a programmer does? What about the other roles? Are they doing a bad job? Are they making customers unhappy? Instead of job elimination, what if we focused on problem elimination? Cost, time and market competition might be problems, but what are the problems behind those problems? “AI is coming for you” implies that you are the problem.
Starting from problems and working outward doesn’t mean AI won’t be the solution. In many cases it will be. The reframe provides focus. It gives leaders a much clearer starting point for investment decisions. It gives teams clarity on what to work on. It meets AI beginners where they are.
AI can play a role in identifying those problems. Artificial Intelligence has the capacity to analyze more information than a human ever could. It can pore through years of sales data and find patterns a human couldn’t. The AI fluent can focus their problem finding efforts there.
Along with every other human, AI beginners have a lifetime of lived experiences. They can share specific interactions with customers and recall the tone, body language and behaviors of those customers.
This pairing provides important guardrails. Instead of searching for things AI could do, it puts the problem at the center, with AI in the pool of possibilities for solving that problem.
This reframe does require a little bit of patience, trust and courage, but I’ve seen it pay off. I’ve watched skepticism transform into relief during workshops with clients. It also allows everyone to participate. It moves from the subjective to the objective. If teams can agree on the problems, they can start to see all kinds of possible solutions, many including AI - just with more focus.
I heard a quote recently from an AI expert that I wanted to weave into this post, but it’s so concise, I think it stands alone:
“AI can write a sentence but it can’t read the room.”
I’ve had countless conversations with leaders and teams around this topic. I’d love to know your thoughts and if this idea resonates!