Everyone’s talking about artificial intelligence these days. Surveys show 77% of companies claim they’re using or exploring AI, and 83% say AI is a top priority. But here’s the real deal: only about one-third of companies have actually integrated AI into their operations. In other words, many boast about AI, but few truly put it to work.
This gap between talk and action is a wake-up call for entrepreneurial companies, especially for Integrators who drive execution. If you’re an Integrator (the day-to-day execution leader in an EOS-run business), you’re either going to push your company forward with AI or risk falling behind.
The Great AI Divide: Adopters vs. Laggards
The business world is splitting into two camps: those embracing AI and those standing still. History shows that when transformative tech comes along, early adopters surge ahead while the hesitant get left behind. McKinsey compares today’s AI moment to the early days of the internet; companies that jumped on the internet wave became giants, while others faded away. The same is happening now with AI.
It’s not just hype; there’s hard evidence of a growing performance gap:
- Only 26% of companies have moved beyond small pilot projects to generate tangible value with AI
- Just 1% of business leaders feel their company is truly “AI mature” with AI fully built into their workflows
- These AI leaders expect up to 60% higher revenue growth and significantly greater cost savings than those lagging behind
What’s holding companies back? Interestingly, it’s not employees; many are eager and already experimenting with tools like ChatGPT. The biggest barrier is leadership not moving fast enough. McKinsey’s 2025 report says employees are ready for AI, but leaders are often slow to steer the change.
In EOS terms, Visionaries and Integrators are either the throttle or the brake on AI adoption. If you, as an Integrator, don’t lead the charge, who will? It’s your role to integrate everything that makes the business better, and today, nothing promises to boost productivity quite like well-implemented AI.
Every week that leadership hesitates, another competitor automates a workflow or delights customers with AI-driven insights. It’s time to decide which side of this divide you want your company on.
Mastering Prompt Engineering: Your New Superpower
Adopting AI isn’t just about buying software or hiring a data scientist. Much of AI’s value today comes from how you use it. This is where prompt engineering becomes essential.
Prompt engineering is the art of communicating with AI systems to get the results you want. In simple terms, it’s learning how to ask AI the right questions and give it the right instructions. For Integrators, prompt engineering is quickly becoming a core competency. It’s like learning to “speak AI” so you can delegate tasks to these powerful systems effectively.
Why should a busy Integrator care? Because mastering prompt engineering can turn you into an “AI power user” who can:
- Draft a process document in seconds
- Generate ideas on demand
- Summarize meetings instantly
- Analyze customer feedback without breaking a sweat
It makes you exponentially more productive. In the same time it takes others to debate whether to use AI, you’ll be getting actual work product from it.
The good news is you don’t need to spend thousands on a degree to learn prompt engineering. There are plenty of free resources to help you and your team become proficient:
- OpenAI’s Prompt Engineering Best Practices – A free tutorial covering fundamentals of writing good prompts
- “Fast & Free” Prompt Engineering Course by Maximilian Vogel – A concise 45-minute course with the 10 most important prompt techniques
- LearnPrompting.org – An open-source, comprehensive guide with interactive lessons
- Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT (Vanderbilt University) – A free Coursera course for those wanting deeper understanding
- Elvis Saravia’s Prompt Engineering Guide – A comprehensive resource for advanced techniques
Investing time in even one or two of these resources will pay off immediately. You’ll start seeing better results from AI tools as you apply these prompting tips. And as an Integrator, you can teach your team the same skills. Consider making “prompt of the week” a thing and share a cool prompt technique in your Level 10 meetings to spread the knowledge.
Practical Ways to Start Using AI in Your Company Today
Let’s get practical. It’s one thing to decide to embrace AI; it’s another to weave it into your business. The key is to start small, start smart, and start now. Here are concrete strategies to get moving with AI immediately.
1. Audit Your Processes for Quick Wins
Take a look at your day-to-day and weekly tasks, both your own and your team’s. Where are the time-consuming, repetitive tasks? Those are your low-hanging fruit for AI.
Is someone manually compiling reports in Excel each week? Have an AI agent do the number-crunching. Does your team spend hours sorting customer inquiries or scheduling meetings? Those are perfect for AI assistance. Map out the steps of a tedious process and see what parts could be automated with readily available tools.
2. Build AI Literacy Across the Team
AI adoption is a team sport. Don’t let it remain the pet project of the “techie” folks. Get everyone comfortable with the basics.
This might mean running a fun demo at your next all-hands meeting showing how ChatGPT can draft an email in seconds, sharing helpful articles, or organizing an internal workshop. The goal is to remove fear and mystique. When people understand how AI could make their work easier, they’ll be eager to try it.
Make AI a topic of ongoing learning in your company, like a more exciting version of compliance or safety training!
3. Lead by Example: Use AI in Your Own Role
As an Integrator, you set the tone. Start using AI tools in your day-to-day work and be open about it.
Need to write a draft of a quarterly plan? Try asking ChatGPT to outline it. Struggling to analyze survey results? Feed them into an AI tool to get a summary of key themes. When your team sees you actively using AI (and hears you say, “I saved two hours on this task by getting AI to draft the baseline for me”), it sends a powerful message. Leadership must champion AI adoption from the top down, so roll up your sleeves and set that example.
4. Pick One Process and Improve It Now
Don’t try to boil the ocean. Pick one important process this quarter and make it better with AI.
Maybe it’s your customer support response workflow. If so, implement an AI chatbot or email drafting assistant to help support reps answer faster. Or perhaps it’s your hiring process. In that case, use an AI tool to screen resumes or schedule interviews automatically. Even something like your weekly Level 10 meeting prep could be sped up by using AI to compile scorecard data or draft the weekly headlines.
Choose a process that’s a bit painful today and pilot an AI solution to improve it. Keep the scope small and measure the results.
5. Encourage Experimentation (and Share Success Stories)
Make it safe for people to experiment with AI. Let your team know they have permission to spend time trying out tools that could make their work easier.
Create a channel (Slack, Teams, or even a portion of your Level 10 meeting) where folks can share “AI wins,” or examples of something they tried that worked. This creates a positive feedback loop where one department’s small win can spark ideas for another.
Pretty soon it becomes part of your company culture to ask, “Could AI help with this?” whenever a problem comes up. That’s exactly where you want to be.
6. Mind the Risks, but Don’t Be Paralyzed
As you implement AI, keep an eye on things like data security (don’t paste sensitive client data into a public tool) and accuracy (review AI outputs; don’t assume they’re 100% correct).
Set some basic guidelines for AI use in your company and remind everyone that AI is a tool to assist, not a magic brain to blindly trust. By addressing these points openly, you’ll build trust that you’re adopting AI responsibly.
Be proactive about guardrails, but keep moving forward. The biggest risk right now is not using AI at all while the rest of the world races ahead.
Take Action: Discover AI Opportunities with the AI Workflow Interviewer
Not sure where to begin? We’ve got a tool for that: “The AI Workflow Interviewer,” a practical way to uncover automation and AI opportunities in your day-to-day business activities.
The AI Workflow Interviewer is a structured Q&A script you can run (for example, with ChatGPT) that walks you through your own workflows. In about 30-45 minutes, it helps you map out your responsibilities, break down the steps of your key processes, pinpoint pain points, and then suggests specific AI solutions.
The process is simple but powerful:
- Pass 1: List your major recurring tasks and time spent
- Pass 2: Dive deeper into those heavy tasks, outlining every step
- Pass 3: Evaluate each step for pain points like time, effort, value-add
- Pass 4: Generate AI or automation solutions for high-potential steps
- Pass 5: Prioritize opportunities and create an action plan
The end result? A mini roadmap to start implementing AI in your business immediately on the things that will save you the most time.
Make this your call to action: set aside an hour in the next week to run an AI Workflow Interview on yourself or with your leadership team. Have each department head go through the exercise and bring their top AI opportunity to the table. You could even make it part of a quarterly planning session.
You could also consider adding a new measurable to your weekly Scorecard: “Number of processes improved with AI this week.” This simple metric creates a constant drumbeat of progress. If you improve at least one process with AI each week (even in a small way), imagine where you’ll be in a year, potentially 50+ optimizations deeper, with huge time savings.
The Bottom Line
AI isn’t a shiny object or fad for Integrators; it’s a genuine force multiplier for everything you do. But you only get the advantage if you use it. The gap between companies adopting AI and those dragging their feet is widening every day.
The great news is that adopting AI has never been more accessible. The tools are user-friendly, often inexpensive (or free), and don’t require a PhD to deploy. It starts with curiosity and a willingness to try things out.
Real, simple, helpful, human: that’s the EOS way, and it applies to how we tackle AI, too. Be pragmatic and focused on value. AI is here to help you, not complicate things. Implement one small improvement at a time, but keep at it consistently. Go ahead: take the leap, grab these new tools, and make AI an ally in your business. Leaders who harness AI will own the future, and you’re in the driver’s seat. Let’s go!
