Start with the Team, Not the Tech: Why Bottom-Up AI & Automation Makes Business Sense

In the race to integrate AI & Automation, many companies instinctively lean on top-down strategies — believing leadership must set the pace.

It’s a natural reflex, but it’s also like slamming the brakes when you need to accelerate.

• Too often, the assumption is that IT departments can (and should) identify and implement AI and automation use cases across business functions.
• While top-down guidance is essential for setting frameworks like governance and data ethics, real AI adoption that makes a difference almost always starts bottom-up.
• Business units know their daily operations, bottlenecks, and frustrations best. They’re the ones who can spot opportunities to automate, simplify, and innovate.

The Disconnect Between IT and Daily Operations

Delegating AI entirely to IT sounds efficient. But in practice, it’s a bottleneck.

IT teams are brilliant at scaling infrastructure and systems. But they’re often too far removed from the specific processes and micro-pain points of individual teams.

This leads to a slow, frustrating trickle-down of capabilities — and missed opportunities where AI could make immediate impact.

We believe that at the moment, smaller, targeted bets — driven by operational teams — lead to faster success than massive, top-down programs where ROI is hard even to predict.

Frontline Teams Know Where Change Is Needed

People doing the work know where the friction is.

A McKinsey study found that 78% of companies already use generative AI (in 2024) in at least one business function — and adoption is being led by marketing, sales, and operations teams on the frontlines.

This shows that domain-specific insights, not boardroom assumptions, drive real progress.

Leadership’s Role: Enable, Don’t Dictate

Leadership should focus on creating an environment that encourages innovation and experimentation while establishing ground rules. This involves governance, providing the necessary tools, training, knowledge and resources, as well as establishing clear communication channels to integrate employee-driven initiatives into the broader strategic framework.

In other words: Create the runway. Let the teams build the planes.

The Synergy of Bottom-Up and Top-Down

The most effective AI & Automation transformations are never purely bottom-up or top-down — they are both.

Leadership defines the vision and clears the way.

Teams on the ground bring the insights, energy, and experiments that turn ambition into real operational wins.

When you empower your teams and give them strategic playbooks, you don’t just spark innovation — you actually ‘get sh*t done’.

Because at the end of the day, AI isn’t about creating more hype decks.

It’s about solving real problems, faster.