This WWDC 1997 clip gets shared a lot as a lesson in how Steve Jobs handled a hostile question. A developer stood up and told him, in front of the whole room, that on several counts he didn’t know what he was talking about. Apple had just killed OpenDoc and was betting on Java instead, and the developer wanted to know how Java could possibly replace what OpenDoc offered.

Jobs pauses, stays calm, and answers with composure. It’s a good video and a good lesson.

But his actual answer tends to get lost. He said: “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it.”

I think many companies are approaching AI by starting with the technology. A new technology arrives, and the question becomes “where can we use AI?” That’s how a lot of past technology waves were handled too, and it’s a big part of why the ROI so often falls short of what leaders expected.

At Qandaba, we start with the business, not the technology:

• Where are you trying to grow, and what’s standing in the way?
• What’s costing you the most right now, in money, time, or customers?
• What are your delivery bottlenecks?
• Where is the effort out of proportion to the value it creates?
• What have you already tried, and why didn’t it stick?

Only then do we look at whether AI is the right answer.

Sometimes it is. Sometimes a simpler fix does the job. We rarely start by asking, “How would you like to use AI?”

Start with the problem. Work backward to the solution.

How have you been approaching AI? If you want to talk through where it fits in your business, book time with me.