Insights on AI strategy, digital marketing, business leadership and technology adoption across Africa and emerging markets.
AI Strategy
NITDA has warned organisations and staff against putting sensitive data into public AI tools. I could not agree more. A warning tells people what to stop. Governance gives them a safe way to keep going.
AI Strategy
Three things a property team can start this month, beginning with the one that needs no technology at all.
AI
You cannot model what nobody recorded. In property, the first project is writing down what is currently in somebody’s phone.
AI Strategy
Property is the sector where the data problem is most obvious and least discussed. Most of what a developer knows is in somebody’s phone.
AI Strategy
Three administrative things a health team can start this month, and the patient data rule that comes before all of them.
AI
The diagnostic debate is the interesting one. The stock-out is the one killing people this week.
AI Strategy
Almost every AI conversation in healthcare starts with diagnosis. Almost every solvable problem in African healthcare is administrative.
AI Strategy
Three things an energy team can start this month without going anywhere near a safety case.
AI
The engineering estate is governed to an extremely high standard. The commercial floor, in most companies, is governed not at all.
AI Strategy
This sector has more operational data than almost any other and acts on less of it. The reason is rarely the technology.
AI Strategy
Three things a firm can start this month without touching a client matter, and the rule to write down before anybody does.
Mentorship
Every other week someone asks me to mentor them. For years I had no good way to say yes. This is what changed, how my mentorship actually works, and the honest truth about who it is for and who it is not.
Digital Sales
People ask me whether selling technology is different from selling anything else. After more than two decades of doing both, my honest answer is yes and no. And the space between those two answers is exactly where most sales careers stall.
AI
Firms keep treating this as a technology decision. It is a pricing decision wearing a technology costume.
AI Strategy
Nigerian companies are racing to adopt AI. But most are doing it wrong in ways that expose them to serious risk. Stanislaus Martins introduces BROAI, Bring Your Own AI, and why it should be keeping boardrooms up at night.
AI Strategy
A firm that bills by the hour has an awkward relationship with anything that makes the hour shorter. That tension explains most of what happens next.
AI Strategy
Three things an agency can start this month without touching client-facing work, and the confidentiality rule to write down before anybody starts.
AI
You automate the report and save six hours a week. Then the six hours quietly become more reporting. Nothing reached a client.
AI Strategy
An agency does not only hold its own secrets. It holds everybody else’s. That changes what ungoverned AI use actually costs you.
Digital Sales
Africa's digital economy is growing faster than the people trained to sell it. After more than two decades of selling technology on the agency side, the client side and the platform side, I kept meeting the same gap in every market. This is the story of why I finally decided to close it.
AI Strategy
Three things a commercial team can start this month with data already in the sales system, and the step to take before any of them.
AI
The consumer-facing AI project gets funded because it photographs well. The forecasting project sits unfunded, and it is the one holding the money.
AI Strategy
Ask a retailer in Ogun State what AI means and you will hear about a chatbot. The version that would actually change their month is nothing like that.
AI Strategy
Three things an account team can start this month without a system purchase, and the rule to set before anybody pastes a client transcript anywhere.
AI
Teams automate the part the client sees and leave the internal reporting alone. It should be the other way round.
AI Strategy
Most account teams find out a client is unhappy at the point the client says so out loud. By then the decision has usually already been made somewhere you were not invited.
AI Strategy
Three things a financial services team can start this month with data already sitting in the business, and the one step to take before any of them.
AI Strategy
Stock that has not moved in months, next to a list of lines that ran out last week. Both are cash, and that is where AI in retail should start.
AI
The pilot was never the hard part. Getting a model into a process that somebody owns, with a number attached, is the hard part.
AI Strategy
A bank will spend nine months on an AI vendor evaluation while somebody in collections is already pasting customer statements into a free chatbot. Both things are true at once.
AI Strategy
CFOs rarely ask me whether AI is working. They ask how they would even know if it were.
AI Strategy
Three things a telco team can start this month without a procurement cycle, and the one step most operators skip before any of them.
AI
Operators keep buying the tool before answering the question. Which data is this connected to, and who is accountable when it goes wrong?
AI Strategy
Every hand goes up when I ask a telecoms team who used an AI tool this week. The second question is the one that matters, and that is where the room goes quiet.
Technology
I built and shipped a production SaaS product on my own with AI tools. This is what actually happened, including the parts that were hard.
AI Strategy
Before you hire an AI consultant or build an AI department, look at your payroll. The people who will make your AI strategy work are usually there already.
AI Strategy
A mandate gets you compliance. With AI, compliance gets you the minimum, and the minimum is worth almost nothing.
Technology
How much can one capable person, with the right AI tools and systems, actually build? I keep coming back to that question, and so should anyone running a business.
AI Strategy
Start with the tools and you bend the business around the technology. The companies getting AI right start with their most expensive problem.
Leadership
I did not plan to work on three sides of the same table. At each stage there was something I could only learn by sitting on the other side.