AI Knows the Recipe. It Doesn't Know How to Fold the Cheese.

"If you say 'fold in the cheese' one more time..."

If you've watched Schitt's Creek, you'll remember the scene.

David is following a recipe. It tells him to "fold in the cheese."

His response?

"What does that mean? How do you fold it?"

Moira assumes(?) everyone already knows.

This classic scene from Schitt’s Creek perfectly captures what I see happening with AI in organisations today.

AI can write you procedures. It can produce training guides, project plans and implementation checklists for you in seconds.

Ask it how to redesign a claims process, improve a contact centre or automate a workflow, and you'll get a very convincing answer.

But there is a gap.

AI can tell you what to do. It can't stand in your business, watch work actually happen, challenge assumptions, facilitate difficult conversations between teams, or help people change the way they work.

It can't tell the difference between the documented process and the process that really happens every day.

That's where process engineering and AI enablement come together.

At CXO2, we're finding that the organisations achieving the greatest return from AI aren't starting with the technology. They're starting with the work.

They understand the customer journey and take the time to map the process as it operates in the reality of work for the people who carry out the work.  We are helping our clients identify waste, friction and opportunities that drive up to 30% improvements in productivity.

And then we work with them to where automation and AI can add more value.

AI makes a great accelerator, but it isn't a substitute for understanding the problem.

As we often say in our practice, you need to fall in love with the problem before you fall in love with the solution.

Otherwise you're simply automating confusion.

Technology implementation is the easy part.  Helping an organisation understand how work really happens, redesign it, embed new ways of working and build capability is where the real value lies.

Sometimes every organisation needs someone who can stand beside the team and say, "Here's how you fold the cheese."