Last week, I spoke with a business leader who’s excited about AI. But as we talked, it became clear that there’s a wide gulf between enthusiasm and creating value for a particular business.
Most people’s impression of AI is based on limited use and media hype. Take the recent Ghibli-fication mania: millions are smitten with the idea of seeing themselves as a Miyazaki character. (I’m one of them!) And it’s understandable: the outputs are impressive.
But AI can do more than make beautiful drawings or write compelling essays. As I’ve argued before, these aren’t the best uses for AI. Instead, we should use it to augment our abilities.
But how? It’s hard to see beyond the outputs — especially since doing so entails getting more abstract. I’m still thinking about how to explain it, but three ideas are key:
- Businesses consist of information flows.
- Information exists to support decisions.
- Information can be optimized for better decision-making.
Let’s unpack them.
First, your business consists of information flows. Whatever your business is, it runs on information: how it’s captured, produced, shared, and processed. A proposal? Information. The request behind it? Also information. A standup meeting? An exchange of information.
Your business creates value when it uses information effectively. Sure, that’s not the only way it creates value: the things you make and services you provide are key. But information is essential.
Why? Because of the second point: information is in service to decision-making. The proposal helps the prospect decide whether to work with you. Research helps you decide whether to enter a new market. The meeting helps determine next steps.
Third, information can be optimized. When I say “information,” you may think spreadsheets and databases. But that’s structured information. Most business information — conversations, documents, emails — is unstructured.
Consider that meeting. It may have some structure: an agenda, list of attendees, start and end time. But the stuff you care about — what people say — isn’t structured. Even if you transcribe it, you must still think about what it means for you.
AI can help tame the messy information flows that make up real work. Efforts to formalize them often kill spontaneity, nuance, and context. And even if they didn’t, there’s so much information that it’s been hard to make sense of it. But now we have AI.
Don’t let the charismatic drawings distract you. That’s only a superficial application — and commodifying art is bad for our souls. Instead, focus on using AI for tasks that were previously impossible or impractical:
- working with vast amounts of unstructured information,
- playing out what-if scenarios at scale, and
- augmenting your team’s expertise.
Information architects can help. We’ve been mapping information flows and making sense of unstructured information for decades. If you’re exploring how AI could create real business value — not just flashy outputs — let’s talk.