Let's Talk Growth

Becoming AI-Ready

Culture, operations, and services that scale the right way

Author: Desiree Whitehead

The biggest myth at INBOUND was that AI is the blueprint. It is not. You are. Katie Lambert said it best. Humans lead. AI accelerates. When we treat AI like any other tool, we get outcomes. When we chase tools, we lose the plot.

Here is how we build an AI-ready organization that still feels human.

Step 1: Culture That Learns

Before tools, create space to learn.

  • Psychological safety. People should feel safe to try, test, and share what did not work.
  • Time and budget to explore. Give teams a weekly block and a small sandbox budget. Protect it on the calendar.
  • Knowledge sharing. Short show-and-tell sessions. One internal doc per month with the best prompts, checklists, and examples.


Outcome to watch: more internal demos, fewer private experiments. Momentum increases when teams teach each other.

Step 2: Operations That Free Up Capacity

Most partners are redesigning back offices and delivery. Good. Start small.

  • Automate your back office. Capacity planning, scheduling, and handoffs.
  • Augment contact records. Use assistants to enrich contacts with context and next steps.
  • Standardize your intake. Clear briefs. Required fields. Tidy data in means better outputs out.


Pilot idea: choose one repetitive task that drains your best people. Document the steps. Automate 30 percent. Measure hours saved.

Step 3: Services That Move Upstream

AI is not only a way to deliver faster. It is a way to widen your lane.

  • From deliverables to outcomes. Sell the business change, not just the asset.
  • Strategic transformation offers. Messaging frameworks, buyer journey mapping, and change management sprints.
  • Onboarding agents where it makes sense. Only where the data and governance are ready. Keep a human in the loop.


Guardrail: do not add a service you cannot explain in one paragraph without jargon.

Step 4: Positioning That Says What You Stand For

Growth is easier when your story is clear. Pick a lane and say it plainly.

  • Who you serve now.
  • The outcomes you own.
  • Proof that you can repeat it.
  • The parts of the process that are human by design.


Partners on the PAC panel said to band together, specialize, and build case studies. Your positioning should make those partnerships obvious.

Risk Is Real. Govern It.

Dario from Anthropic talked about alignment, trust, and safety. We need practical controls.

  • Prompt security. Treat prompts and system instructions like source code.
  • Access control. Limit who can connect tools to your data. Review scopes before you approve.
  • Red teaming. Try to break your own setup. Document failure modes.
  • Incident playbooks. If something goes wrong, who does what in the first 60 minutes.


Simple audit: list the top 10 datasets your agents could touch. Note owners, retention, and approved use. Close gaps before you ship big changes.

Your 30-60-90 AI-Ready Plan

Days 1–30: Learn and map.

  • One team learning block on the calendar.
  • Inventory your repetitive tasks and customer touchpoints.
  • Map humans vs AI responsibilities for 3 workflows.
  • Pick one internal pilot. Define metrics.

Days 31–60: Pilot and document.

  • Automate part of a back-office process.
  • Add agent support to one customer journey step with a human reviewer.
  • Share what worked in a 30-minute show-and-tell.
  • Update your services page with new outcomes and proof.

Days 61–90: Scale with guardrails.

  • Roll the pilot to a second team or client.
  • Add light governance. Access controls. Prompt hygiene.
  • Publish a short case study. Time saved. Impact delivered. Lessons learned.

Metrics That Matter

  • Hours returned to teams per month.
  • Cycle time from request to delivery.
  • Win rate on offers that include an AI-assisted step.
  • NPS for both clients and internal collaborators.
  • Error rates before and after a pilot.

How Howl Can Help

We start with your culture and your current delivery. We help you map humans vs AI, pick a sensible pilot, and prove value in 90 days. Then we help you evolve services and positioning so your growth story matches what you can deliver.

Ready to transform your marketing

Book 30 minutes with Des to understand how AI-ready you are.

Take the Leap

Bonus: Subscribe to Wolfpack Wisdom for monthly playbooks and case studies.

Recent Posts