Let's have an honest conversation about where we are with AI in 2025. The numbers are rather stark, aren't they? When the University of St Andrews studied nearly 10,000 UK SMEs, they found efficiency gains of 27-133 per cent once AI was properly embedded in day-to-day tasks. That's not a typo – we're talking about potentially doubling productivity. 

Meanwhile, techUK's analysis suggests that if laggards simply matched today's digital front-runners, we could add £232 billion to the UK economy within the decade. That's roughly the GDP of Portugal we're leaving on the table through hesitation. 

Perhaps most tellingly, Cisco's 2024 benchmark revealed that companies who've banned generative AI are already seeing 8 per cent slower year-on-year revenue growth. In today's economic climate, that's the difference between thriving and merely surviving. 
 

The Great British Dithering 

Here's what I'm hearing in boardrooms across the country: "What's AI actually for? How do we measure ROI? Where's the budget coming from? Have we done the risk assessment? What about our policies?" 

These are sensible questions. Absolutely. But whilst we're crafting the perfect 47-page AI governance document, our competitors are already using AI to respond to customer queries faster, generate insights from data we didn't know we had, and free their teams from mind-numbing admin work. 

The truth is, AI is evolving so rapidly that your carefully crafted policies will be outdated before the ink dries. What AI can do today, it'll do better in three weeks' time. And what it'll be capable of in six months? We can't even imagine it yet. 
 

The Perfection Trap 

Here's the thing about waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect policy, the perfect understanding of AI: it's a bit like waiting for the perfect weather to learn to sail. You'll be standing on the shore forever whilst others are already navigating the waters, learning as they go. 

What actually matters is drawing that line in the sand. It's about saying: "Right, we're confident in this policy for now. We've assessed the risks as best we can. We've surveyed our staff and identified their pain points. These AI solutions fit our budget and can help our people do better work, faster." 

The organisations seeing real results aren't the ones with the most comprehensive AI strategies. They're the ones who started somewhere, learned from experience, and adapted as they went. They understood that practical experience beats theoretical perfection every time. 
 

Starting Where You Are 

Think about it this way: every day you delay adopting AI tools that could streamline invoicing, automate routine queries, or help draft that monthly report is another day your team spends on tasks that, frankly, don't need their unique human brilliance. 

Your staff didn't join your organisation to spend hours formatting documents or manually collating survey responses. They joined to make a difference, to use their expertise, to build relationships and solve interesting problems. AI can give them that time back.