Who should own AI in a small company?
Written lesson · about 3 minutes to read
The short answer
One named person should own it: someone who knows how the work is actually done, not a committee and not automatically your IT contractor. Give them real hours each week and the authority to say no, and they keep the list of tools and accounts, the AI policy, the results and the vendor relationship.
Three things to remember
- 01Name one person, not a committee, and not automatically the IT contractor.
- 02They need real hours, about half a day a week for one tool, and authority to say no.
- 03The owner of each process still owns its outcome, with or without AI.
Why it needs one name
A tool with no owner becomes a tab nobody opens. The ones that fade had no owner, or an owner in title only, with no hours to do the job. The ones that take hold had someone whose actual job included making them work. In a small company that means one named person, because a committee means everyone assumes someone else is checking.
Who should hold it
Choose someone who knows how the work actually gets done and is trusted by the people doing it. In most businesses that is operations, such as an office manager or a senior person who runs a team, rather than IT. The most technical person is rarely the right choice, because the hard part is judgement about the work. Your IT contractor can help with the technical side without owning the decisions.
They need to be senior enough to say no and close enough to the floor to hear that people are working around the tool. In a very small firm this may be you, the owner. That is fine, as long as you set the hours aside instead of doing it in the gaps.
What the job involves
Keep the list of every AI tool and account, and who has access. Write and update the AI policy. Add people when they start and remove them the day they leave. Track the results of each use, and collect what went wrong and get it fixed. Watch the spend, deal with the vendor and answer the team's questions so they do not quietly give up.
The last job is deciding when to stop something, and saying no to the enthusiastic suggestion that would put AI where it does not belong. The person who runs quoting or dispatch still owns how quoting or dispatch turns out. The AI owner does not take that over.
What to give them
Be honest about hours: about half a day a week for a single tool in one department, and more during a rollout. Name what they will stop doing to make room. Give them the authority to switch a tool off, a budget line they can see, and direct access to whoever signed the vendor contract. Back them when they tell someone that a favourite idea is a bad fit.
What to do this week
Write one name at the top of a page. Under it, list the AI tools and accounts in use today, who has each one, and the hours a week you are giving the owner. Tell the team who it is and what to bring them: questions, mistakes and ideas. If you cannot free the hours, expect the tool to fade by month three.
More in part 4
- 1Build vs. buy AI: which makes sense?
- 2What should AI tools cost a small business each month?Written
- 3How much should an AI project cost?
- 4Are you paying for AI seats nobody uses?
- 5How to pick an AI vendor
- 6What questions should you ask an AI vendor?
- 7How do you run your first AI pilot, step by step?Written
- 8AI pilot vs. production: what changes?
- 9What breaks first when you scale an AI pilot?
- 10Who should own AI in a small company?WrittenYou are here
- 11How do you talk to your team about AI and their jobs?Written
- 12How do you train your team on AI?
- 13How do you get your team to actually use it?Written
- 14How do you prove AI ROI?
- 15How do you know it's working? Picking the right metrics
- 16What is uptime, and what happens when AI goes down?
Next step
Where does this fit your business?
Six quick questions about your business, then your AI plan: what to start with, what a person still checks, and the lessons that go with it. Or bring it straight to a free thirty-minute call.