Shadow AI is already in your business. Giving staff a sanctioned tool reduces risk more effectively than blocking access.

Start with data governance. Know what information you own, where it lives, and who can access it before connecting AI to anything.

Target 3x ROI within 12 months from each AI initiative. If it is not covering its costs in six months, move on to another use case.

The most universal use case: an AI assistant connected to your internal knowledge base. It handles questions, speeds up onboarding, and scales as you grow.

Find your AI champions. The people already experimenting in their own time are the ones who will drive adoption across the rest of the business.

For most SMBs, Copilot is not the right call. ChatGPT Teams or a similar managed setup gives comparable security with far better usability.

Quick wins first. Prove value with something small and iterative before committing budget and attention to a larger initiative. Change fatigue is real, make people’s lives easier before asking them to learn more.

Jack Behrns

AI Strategy Lead · First Focus

Jack came from an account management and service delivery background before stepping into the AI strategy role at First Focus. His work covers internal AI adoption, tooling decisions, and helping clients design and implement their own AI roadmaps.

Day to day, that means running adoption workshops, identifying AI champions inside client organisations, measuring ROI on initiatives, and working out when to keep going and when to cut something loose. He is also the person behind First Focus’s internal AI assistant Sam, and the CORE product that brings managed AI to client environments.