After working across industries and growth stages, patterns emerge. Not in the problems businesses face, but in how they respond to change.
Right now, the change in question is Artificial Intelligence. And in almost every conversation we have, businesses fall into one of three groups.
The early adopters.
These are the businesses already inside it. Testing workflows. Building internal capability. Making mistakes and learning from them in real time. They’re not waiting for a case study that proves AI works, they are generating their own evidence.
What sets them apart isn’t technical knowledge. It’s a willingness to move and test before everything is certain. Early adopters have accepted that learning happens through doing, and they’ve structured their teams accordingly.
The watchers.
This is the largest group. Businesses that are aware, interested, and not yet moving. Attending the webinars, reading the reports and waiting for the right moment or the right level of confidence before they commit.
Every month spent observing is a month of applied learning that can’t be recovered later.
The ones who've given up waiting.
These businesses have made a decision, even if they haven’t named it. The timing never felt right, the tools felt overwhelming, and at some point the window felt closed.
The risk isn’t just falling behind on AI. It’s falling behind on the underlying behaviour, the willingness to adapt, test, and evolve. That is what determines how a business navigates every wave of change, not just this one.
The question worth sitting with isn’t which category you’re in. It’s whether you’re comfortable staying there.
