John Wheeler

By John Wheeler The biggest near-term risk from business AI is not a machine suddenly taking control of the world. It is a capable system entering a company with an unclear job, broad access, weak controls, and no accountable manager.…

How to turn an AI subscription into useful, governed business capacity By John Wheeler Buying AI gives a company access to capability. It does not decide what that capability should do, what information it should trust, or who is responsible…

The tool becomes more powerful. Human skill becomes more valuable. By John Wheeler From Axes and Crosscut Saws My great-grandfather came to America as an immigrant. He helped clear the great forests of the Pacific Northwest using axes and crosscut…

There is a popular story about artificial intelligence that begins with fear: AI is coming for your job. I think that story starts in the wrong place. AI does not replace the human at all. AI is a tool. Excel…

For the past few years, most business leaders have thought about artificial intelligence as a tool. We open an AI app, type a question, receive an answer, and decide what to do with it. In that model, AI is much…

For decades, the enterprise resource planning system has been at the center of the company. The ERP records sales orders, purchase orders, inventory, production, invoices, payments, and the general ledger. It creates structure around the daily work of the business.…

A company can buy AI without becoming intelligent. It can install copilots, build agents, connect AI to its ERP system, and automate dozens of tasks. But none of that guarantees the company is actually getting smarter. The better question is…

What AI Actually Does for a Business There is a lot of noise around artificial intelligence right now. Every week, there seems to be a new AI model, agent, copilot, or product promising to change the way we work. For…

Most business leaders I talk to are thinking about AI. They are asking sensible questions. How can AI help our employees work faster? Can it analyze our data? Can it improve customer service? Can it automate some of the work…

For the last few years, most of the conversation around artificial intelligence at work has focused on tools. Which AI tool should employees use? Should we buy Copilot? ChatGPT? Claude? How do we teach people to write better prompts? How…

I had one of those moments recently when technology moved faster than the policies I had in place to manage it. An employee wanted to use Claude to help do her job. To do that, Claude needed access to company…

Artificial intelligence can do some remarkable things. It can write an email, analyze a spreadsheet, research a market, summarize a meeting, help write software, or work through a difficult business problem. But there is a problem that becomes much more…