I thought I’d share a few thoughts about what I’m doing this month. It’s not related to HubSpot directly, but is indirectly, because it goes a step higher and thinks about business strategy.
Every year, usually in May, I take four weeks off to clear my head, read, learn, and think about the business – where it’s headed and where I want it to head.
I try do this in May, but I was sick in early April and I’ve only now fully recovered and caught up on things. So, this week I’m starting to clear my schedule, clear my mind, and open my thinking around what the year ahead holds.
This year is more important than any other year I’ve done this because AI is so prevalent in people’s minds and business processes. Even if the technical capability doesn’t match some of the wild use cases being touted yet, people’s perception is that it can – and perception is more important in many ways, because people change their behaviour based on perception.
For those of us who work in consulting or knowledge work, this is crucial to understand and plan for.
There are three main areas I’m going to focus on over the next couple of weeks as I think through what this means for our businesses:
[1] Internal – How we use AI
First is how we use AI internally. I don’t think that’s a huge challenge. Most of us are already using it, and it’s about accelerating processes. There’s talk about replacing people with AI – that’s not a likelihood for us in a small business or for many other small businesses. It should be helping us accelerate what we already do well.
[2] External – Clients replacing us with AI
Second is looking externally at what our clients do and what they use us for, thinking through what they are going to use instead of us, where AI will be part of their process compared to where they might have spoken with us previously.
Again, perception here is the key issue. Even if AI doesn’t provide as good a service, the perception from many clients is it does, creating a huge threat to us. We’re noticing this in some industries more than others. For physical product-based businesses—pumps, mechanics, mining, automotive, construction—it’s less of a case. But in software and knowledge worker industries, we’re noticing people will happily turn to ChatGPT versus setting up a strategy call with us, regardless of results. It’s the perception they feel, and that’s a threat.
[3] Eternal – Clients needing us to solve new problems
Third is examining the opportunities for us. This is a shifting of problems to solve. Items two and three are about focusing on the problems to solve for clients. Some problems we solve now, they will use AI for, but there will be new problems we can provide solutions for – a big opportunity for us.
That’s what I’ll be looking at over the next couple of weeks: getting more clarity about our plan, what things we need to change/remove in our offerings, what new things we need to offer, and ensuring we lead by example internally by making all our processes efficient.
Luxury
When I mentioned to a friend I was taking time off to do this, he said it was great that I had the luxury of being in a position where I could spend time doing something like this.
But I see it differently: I don’t have the luxury of not doing this. This is an imperative for all businesses this year.
