Everybody says they're behind on AI. Behind what, exactly? That's the question at the center of our conversation with Susan Sanders, back on the podcast after her first visit during COVID. Susan has spent three years working almost exclusively on AI adoption inside organizations. What she sees is a lot of companies winning a race that looks like running on a treadmill. They're burning calories. They can see their pace. They're still standing in the same gym. She unpacks the difference between usage and adoption, and why counting how many times someone opens ChatGPT tells you almost nothing. AI is like electricity, she says. It offers the potential for value, not inherent value. Until you turn on the light switch, you don't have light.
We also get honest about what this is costing people. Susan names the fear of becoming obsolete. She names the employees working longer hours to learn AI on top of the job they already have. And the leaders who say AI won't take your job, right before ten thousand layoffs. But there's real opportunity here too. She points to IKEA, which retrained an entire customer support team into interior designers and built a new revenue line. And to a nonprofit training service dogs for veterans, where saved admin time means more humans in the field doing work no robot can do. Her framing sticks with us. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Listen in as we talk about breaking the AI spell, redesigning work instead of layering AI onto it, and what it might look like to change the racing course altogether.
