Andy NearyI help insurance professionals turn brand awareness into business growth.

Applying AI to a workflow that doesn’t exist will only lead to failing faster. #ai

8 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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In this talk, the speaker challenges the common question of "where can we put AI in our business?" by highlighting that many organizations lack a defined existing process for the task they want to automate. He argues that inserting AI into a workflow that doesn't already exist merely accelerates failure, likening it to trying to teach a monkey to play chess on an empty board—both the AI specialist and the organization become frustrated. The core recommendation is to first map and understand the current process (or acknowledge that none exists) before attempting any AI integration, ensuring that AI augments an established workflow rather than building one from scratch.

Chapters

Somebody asks, well, where can I put AI into my business? And the first question I always ask when they say, well, we need help with this. Great. That's a perfect place to use it. What's your process now? And I usually get blank stares. Well, we're not really doing it now. It's like, well, then all you're going to do is you're just going to do it wrong faster. If we, if we try to throw an AI workflow or an AI process into a process that doesn't exist, we're going to be building it from scratch. And. It's like trying to teach a monkey to play chess. You're just going to aggravate the monkey. And usually that monkey is going to be the AI guy you hired to write this because they're going to get frustrated trying to get you to explain the process that doesn't exist. Having been there, I get to be a very frustrated monkey trying to play chess with a chessboard with no pieces on it. And so as an agency is looking at it, always start with, do we actually have a process for doing it now or do we just wing it?