AI Initiatives Must Be Clarified, Aligned, and Prioritized (CAP).
By: Carl Neely
In my experience of leading, implementing, and assessing AI and analytics solutions, I've found that getting measurable value often starts with your initiatives being CAP - Clarified, Aligned, and Prioritized.
- Clarified means you understand the expected results and outcomes from AI solutions
- Aligned means you understand what goals will be achieved or impacted from AI solutions
- Prioritized means you understand which AI solutions are most important for your goal
Simply deploying AI and instructing people to use it isn’t enough. Also, going after “low hanging fruit”, often get you marginal results still leaving doubts about the true value of your AI initiatives. Without CAP, organizations risk experiencing a high degree of the AI value gap problem (MIT researchers call this the GenAI divide) where AI results consistently fail to meet expectations. Regardless of your tech stack (Azure, Google, AWS, etc.) or AI solution type (Agentic, GenAI, LLMs, ML, etc.), starting without CAP will likely lead to disappointing results and unnecessarily wasted resources.
Now certainly there are other critical success factors, but starting with CAP can help prevent the AI value gap problem. How – CAP creates a shared and common understanding of what goals can be achieved, what success looks like, and what AI solutions matter most for you.
I created a very simple decision support tool to help leaders get their AI initiatives clarified, aligned, and prioritized (CAP). This quick DIY guide is ideal for executives and leaders at mid-size companies, SMBs, startups, and non-profits seeking cost-effective alternatives to premium consulting services. The tool distills decision-making to core questions and 3 principal responses.
Download it here, read and answer your relevant questions by selecting 1 of 3 responses. Feel free to improve and share it with the AI community. Also, you can customize it to fit your organization specific needs.
Valulenix uses the CAP approach with other advanced tools in its five-step process (link) to drive AI value for organizations in various sectors.