Before You Automate, You Have to Understand:
Why We Built an AI Workshop from Scratch for Business Owners

A few weeks ago I had the chance to facilitate an artificial intelligence workshop with my Vistage group, #152. Before building the content we did something simple: a survey to find out where everyone stood. The answers confirmed something I'd been suspecting for a while.

Everyone Uses AI, Nobody Knows Where to Go Next

Of the six business owners who responded, all six were already using some AI tool: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. This wasn't a group arriving without having tried it. And yet, five out of six checked the same fear: "not understanding the technology and falling behind." Half added another: "not knowing where to start."

What struck me most was this. All six, without exception, picked "automating my company's processes" as what they most wanted to learn. One summed it up better than anyone in the free-text field: "I don't know, automate everything."

That's the tension. There's an enormous expectation (automation, agents, efficiency) and, at the same time, a feeling of not having solid ground underneath. People want the roof without having laid the foundation.

The Problem Isn't the Tool, It's the Foundation

Today every business owner is bombarded with novelty: a new model every week, agents, automations, "the AI that replaces your team." It makes sense that this breeds frustration. When you don't understand what a language model is, why it sometimes makes up data with complete confidence, or why the same question gives different results depending on how you phrase it, every new tool becomes one more black box.

And you can't make business decisions with a black box. You can't judge whether it's worth investing, which process to delegate first, or how much to trust what it gives back.

That's why I decided the workshop wouldn't start with the flashiest topics, but with the fundamentals. More than impressing anyone, I wanted each person to leave with a base they could keep building on by themselves.

What We Covered

It was two hours, hands-on, everyone with their own laptop, testing in real time. In broad strokes:

• What generative AI and an LLM really are, without jargon. The underlying shift: we went from searching for information to delegating tasks.
• How to ask well. A vague prompt gets a vague answer. We worked with a simple formula (Role, Objective, Context, Action) to give the AI what it needs.
• Hallucinations and "human in the loop." AI proposes, a person validates. Especially for numbers, legal matters, and anything that leaves the company.
• Working with your own files: spreadsheets, PDFs, documents. That's where many started to see concrete value.
• Agents and automation, with a real case from the group: a business owner who spends hours matching new suppliers' price lists against their own products.
• Complementary tools to build a website or a digital tool without coding.

What I Take Away

The richest conversation wasn't about any particular tool. It was when each person started looking at their own company with new eyes: "this thing I do by hand every week, could it be delegated?" That question is the real starting point, and it only shows up when you understand the basics.

We didn't leave as experts, and that wasn't the point. There's far more ground to cover: more complex automations, systems integration, criteria for investing. But now there's a common floor to build on.

Thank you to the Vistage #152 group for the openness, the questions, and the drive.

Does Any of This Sound Familiar in Your Company?

If you're a business owner and you feel AI is passing you by, my recommendation is simple: don't start with the newest tool. Start by understanding how it works. Everything else gets built from there.

And if you recognize yourself in any of this (you use AI but don't know how to bring it into the rest of the business, you have processes you'd like to automate and don't know where to begin, or you simply have doubts), write to me. We can have a first one-on-one conversation, no commitment, to understand how your company works and see together where artificial intelligence can bring real value, and where it can't.

You can message me directly on LinkedIn or through the contact page.