Practical, evidence-based guidance from Dan Fitzpatrick on how small and medium-sized businesses adopt AI well: strategy, training, governance and getting real work done.
AI can chase invoices, sort receipts and explain your numbers, but it should never set a figure in your books, move money or change who gets paid on its own. Here is where to draw the line, and what to do this week.
17 articles
The Digital Omnibus pushed the EU AI Act's high-risk rules to December 2027 and softened the AI literacy duty. Here is what the Act still asks of a small business, and a simple way to sort every AI use you have onto one of four shelves.
Most small businesses will start the new year with AI in their people's browser tabs and nowhere in their plan. Here is what a one-page AI plan should hold, and the test every line must pass before it goes in.
AI now does much of the work trainees used to learn on, and entry-level hiring is falling fastest where AI is most capable. Here is why most small businesses should keep hiring juniors, and how to rebuild the role around the job AI cannot do.
Most businesses using AI cannot say whether it is working, because nobody wrote down a before number. Here is a simple way to measure AI job by job: time, corrections, and where the saved hours go.
Prompting is a job skill, but underneath it is the old skill of giving a clear brief. Here is the New Hire Test, what the research says, and a practical way to teach prompting to a small business team in a month.
Give AI the work around the sales conversation, not the conversation itself. Four jobs to start with, what stays with people, and the Receipt Rule that keeps every claim you publish true.
Most staff who avoid AI are not afraid of it; they prefer their own way of working. Start with the chore they would happily give away, never the craft they are proud of, and let the hours saved persuade the rest.
Most small businesses do not need to hire an AI lead yet. Official figures show almost none do. Appoint an AI steward from inside first, give them three duties, and hire only when the work outgrows the time.
Most staff in small and medium-sized businesses already use AI tools nobody approved. Banning them drives the habit underground. Here is the one-week Daylight Rule for bringing shadow AI into the open: ask first, sort every use into keep, move or stop, and supply an approved home before you forbid anything.
AI belongs in small business customer service, but not where most owners start. Here is what customers want, who is liable when a chatbot gets it wrong, and the Promise Rule for deciding what AI may say to a customer.
AI agents act rather than advise: they send, book and update on your behalf. Here is what that changes for a small business, where the pitch outruns the evidence, and a simple test for deciding which errands an agent can take and which must stay with people.
