09/23/2026
95% of AI adoption in small business fails. Not because the AI is bad. Because nobody wrote down how the business actually runs.
AI adoption hit 78-88% in at least 1 business function by large organizations this year, according to a report by Avanto. But adoption isn't results. Most leaders are automating chaos and wondering why it got faster instead of better.
I run five companies. Every one had the same problem at some point: decisions and judgment calls that lived in my head, not on paper. You can't hand a machine what was never written down. I learned the hard way, ...but I learned. And kept learning.
Before I let AI touch a process now, I run Recon first, step two of the BROCK Framework. Recon means establishing ground truth: how the work actually happens today, not how I think it happens.
My recommendation - capture the tribal knowledge before you automate it. Otherwise you're just scaling confusion at machine speed.
The operators winning with AI in 2026 aren't the most "AI-forward." They're the ones who did the boring work of documenting first. Stabilize. Standardize. Then scale.
Discipline first. Tools second. Scale last. AI doesn't fix a broken operation. ๐๐ ๐ฏ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ธ๐ ๐ถ๐ ๐ณ๐ฎ๐๐๐ฒ๐ฟ.
What's still living only in your head that should be written down before you automate it?
DIYAI