Why Your AI Strategy Should Start With a Spreadsheet

Wait... what?

Yep. We said it. Before you drop six figures on an LLM integration or name your new product “AI-something,” consider the humble spreadsheet. Because if your team can’t align on basic metrics, data ownership, or workflows in Excel or Sheets… AI isn’t going to save you. It’s just going to scale your confusion.

The Hype Trap Is Real

Companies are sprinting toward AI adoption like it’s a Black Friday sale—grabbing tools, hiring “prompt engineers,” and plugging in copilots. But without foundational clarity—what success looks like, what data is trusted, how decisions are made—AI becomes an expensive mirror. It reflects your chaos back at you... just faster.

A Contrarian Truth

The best AI strategies we’ve seen didn’t start in the cloud—they started in the conference room. With questions like:

• What’s the real problem we’re solving?

• Where are we leaking the most value?

• Do we trust our own data?

Spoiler: The share of companies abandoning most of their AI initiatives jumped to 42% this year, up from 17% last year.

The Spreadsheet Test

Before chasing AGI, try this:

• Pick one messy process—customer onboarding, pricing, monthly reporting...

• Get it running cleanly in a spreadsheet.

• Track inputs, outputs, ownership, and decisions.

• Then ask: What part of this could AI enhance—without adding noise?

If your team can’t make it work on a spreadsheet, they won’t make it work with AI.

The Takeaway

Innovation isn’t about the shiniest tech—it’s about the sharpest questions.

And sometimes, the smartest AI strategy is just cleaning up your act in a Google Sheet.

Because if your business isn’t ready for clarity, it’s definitely not ready for cognition.

Want help building an AI roadmap that actually delivers? Let's chat. No buzzwords. No black boxes. Just business value, faster.