“The AI hype is loud, the choices endless, and the starting line isn’t clear for most organizations,” says Richard Achée, founder and CEO of Found42 and a former Google leader. His firm works with SMB executives who feel paralyzed by AI’s promise and pressure, helping them find practical paths to ROI.
Your Team is Already Using AI (They Just Won’t Tell You)
While many executives are struggling to find the right use cases for AI, adoption is already happening in their company. “Your team is already using AI,” Achée notes. “They just won’t tell you.” According to multiple studies, including a recent one by MIT, the vast majority of employees are using ‘shadow AI’. This means they are using consumer versions of tools like Chat GPT for daily tasks, often without approval from IT.
Why the secrecy? Achée believes there are two reasons: some employees want to keep their productivity boost to themselves, while others worry about company policies. “Maybe they see it as their superpower and want to keep it a secret. Maybe they’re worried because they don’t know what the guardrails are for using AI with company data,” he explains.
The solution is simple. “CEOs need to become the chief evangelist for AI adoption, create clarity on how it can and can’t be used in the organization, and empower AI champions to lead the way,” Achée says.
Create a Clear Policy of Do’s and Dont’s with AI
The problem many companies face is a lack of clear policies on AI. “I see this at organizations of all sizes,” Achée says. “If you don’t tell employees what tools they can use, and what types of information they can share with those tools, then expect shadow AI to be rampant.” Without guardrails, employees may push ahead by building automations with unvetted apps. That leads to leaks, duplicated effort, and lost learning.
“The key is to create a clear set of guidelines of what tools they can use, what information can be uploaded to these tools, and what is out of bounds,” Achée explains. “Once they have clarity, employees stop hiding their AI use, start sharing their knowledge, and productivity jumps across the board.”
Train Your Teams on Foundational Tools
Only 12 percent of SMEs have invested in AI training, and 52 percent cite lack of internal skills as a barrier to adoption according to a study by NBSA.
Achée believes role-specific training on enterprise-grade tools pays back quickly. “Show employees how AI fits into their daily workflows, and you’ll see a boost in adoption and real ROI,” Achée says. “Without training on how to prompt in the context of their job, most people will struggle to get value from AI.” This approach delivers immediate productivity gains without overwhelming teams with complex systems.
Elevate AI Champions
CEOs have the opportunity to elevate their AI champions as the new path to career growth. “Traditionally, individual contributors viewed people management as the only path for advancing in their careers. Those days are gone,” Achée says. “Instead, we are seeing the emergence of AI champions as the new growth opportunity. They are leading the way, running a ‘business within a business’ by managing AI agents rather than human teams.”
We are seeing this pattern already in sales and marketing. “If you have just one or two people in your go-to-market function who lean in and learn how to get leverage from AI, you can quickly have a game‑changing capability, “ Achée says. “Instead of cycles of meetings with agencies, your AI champions can rapidly experiment with campaign ideas and double down on the ones that work.”
Getting Out of AI Exploration Mode into High ROI Use Cases
According to NBSA, while 25% of SMBs have already embedded AI into their daily operations, 51% are “AI explorers” who are testing AI, but not using it regularly across the organization.
“One customer recently told me that their tool usage was like an auto repair shop with half-assembled cars everywhere. Lots of tools and potential, but nothing fully functional yet,” Achée says. “If they start investigating a potential solution, they will run into rough edges, and they put it on the shelf.” The opportunity is to move out of AI exploration mode and to start leveraging the technology for high impact use cases.
The process begins with what he calls the AI Readiness Scorecard, a simple series of yes-or-no questions that reveal where an organization stands. This prevents companies from leaping into advanced implementations before they are ready. Some teams are enthusiastic but lack centralized, trustworthy data, while others have solid infrastructure but need training first. “The scorecard identifies the most impactful starting point for each situation,” Achée explains.”Once we identify how AI will move the needle for your business, we can build and implement systems that deliver ROI within less than 90 days.”
Follow Richard Achée on LinkedIn for more grounded strategies to operationalize AI in your businesses.
