We want our three-year picture and one-year plan on our V/TO to reflect our goal of becoming an AI-powered operation, but we want to avoid high-level tech jargon. How do we write AI-enabled operational capability into our long-term vision?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Your V/TO is a strategic tool to align your team, not a place to list trendy technology buzzwords or software packages. If you write generic goals like implement artificial intelligence on your V/TO, your team will lose focus and waste time on tech theater.

Instead, frame your goals around the actual operational capabilities and outcomes that AI will enable. Focus on capacity, efficiency, and scalability.

When writing your three-year picture, describe what your business will look like once your operations-improvement projects are complete:
- Target a specific capacity metric, such as double our current project volume with our existing administrative headcount.
- Define your scalability, such as core delivery processes run by expert systems, making the business fully system-dependent.
- Focus on speed, such as reducing our customer onboarding cycle time from two weeks to twenty-four hours.

In your one-year plan, break these down into specific operational milestones. For example, your goal might be to automate our billing reconciliation process using machine learning to free up half of our coordinator's time.

By focusing on results rather than the technology itself, your leadership team can easily evaluate progress, track results on your weekly Scorecard, and maintain absolute traction.