Anthony Franco, Chief AI Officer at First Strategy, puts AI to work in operating companies of 50 to 500 people. Read his bio or get in touch.https://francoinc.comhttps://francoinc.com/articles/pilot-purgatoryhttps://francoinc.com/articles/pilot-purgatoryThe pilot worked, the demo dazzled, and then it sat in 'pilot' for eighteen months and died. The pilot didn't succeed despite being unrealistic; it succeeded because it was. Clean data, a motivated volunteer, a babysitter, no angry Tuesday. Write the production criteria before you run the pilot.Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTai operationsenterprise aiprocess improvementhttps://francoinc.com/articles/i-let-ai-run-my-inboxhttps://francoinc.com/articles/i-let-ai-run-my-inboxI handed my inbox to an AI for a week. It was brilliant at the mechanical 80% and quietly reckless exactly where judgment mattered, and those failures were silent because a smooth wrong reply looks identical to a right one. Let it draft. Keep a human on send for anything with a relationship or a dollar attached.Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-adoptionproductivityfuture-of-workhttps://francoinc.com/articles/the-meeting-that-should-have-been-a-playbookhttps://francoinc.com/articles/the-meeting-that-should-have-been-a-playbookThat recurring status call is a database with terrible latency. The org stores its state by convening humans and having them read it aloud on a schedule, because it never built anywhere to keep it. Ask each meeting one question: is this a decision, or a readout?Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTmeetingsoperationsculturehttps://francoinc.com/articles/stop-buying-ai-toolshttps://francoinc.com/articles/stop-buying-ai-toolsCompanies buy AI tools the way people buy gym memberships in January: the purchase feels like the change. A license is not an outcome, it's a permission slip. Don't approve an AI purchase until someone can state the outcome, the baseline, and the owner in one sentence.Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTai strategyprocurementai operationshttps://francoinc.com/articles/your-calendar-is-lyinghttps://francoinc.com/articles/your-calendar-is-lyingYour calendar says 'strategy sync.' What you actually did was chase three people for a status and hunt forty minutes for a file. The calendar records intentions, not work. And you can't automate a job you've never honestly watched, starting with your own.Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTproductivityoperationsself-awarenesshttps://francoinc.com/articles/the-hero-problemhttps://francoinc.com/articles/the-hero-problemEvery team has a Dave. The one who just handles it, knows the workaround, owns the spreadsheet nobody else understands. You love Dave. Dave is also your single point of failure with a good attitude, and AI just made it worse.Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTleadershipoperationsculturehttps://francoinc.com/articles/ai-proof-your-personal-brandhttps://francoinc.com/articles/ai-proof-your-personal-brandAsk ChatGPT who you are. If you're unlucky, it hallucinates a biography mixing your achievements with a convicted felon. AI search doesn't index your content. It synthesizes it. You need to control the source code.Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal-brandingai-searchai-first-principleshttps://francoinc.com/articles/customer-centricityhttps://francoinc.com/articles/customer-centricityMost founders build products for imaginary customers. AI makes it even easier to skip customer contact entirely. But AI amplifies whatever inputs you give it. If those inputs come from assumptions, AI scales your guesses.Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTcustomer researchai first principlesproduct developmenthttps://francoinc.com/articles/building-processes-that-actually-get-usedhttps://francoinc.com/articles/building-processes-that-actually-get-usedOffice workers say they lose nearly five hours a week to tasks that could be automated. The problem isn't technology. It's that most processes are designed from how work should happen, not how it actually does.Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTprocess improvementoperationshttps://francoinc.com/articles/visual-storytelling-for-foundershttps://francoinc.com/articles/visual-storytelling-for-foundersA founder walks into a pitch meeting with three years of product development, twenty customers, and solid unit economics. Fifteen slides in, the investor checks their phone. Not because the business is weak, but because the deck failed its job in the first thirty seconds.Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpresentationscommunicationfounder skillshttps://francoinc.com/articles/building-leadership-through-performancehttps://francoinc.com/articles/building-leadership-through-performanceYour team doesn't need the real you. They need the version of you who doesn't freeze when the server crashes at 2 AM. Leadership isn't about finding your authentic self. It's about developing the range to serve different contexts.Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTleadershipperformancefounder growthhttps://francoinc.com/articles/building-a-strong-company-culturehttps://francoinc.com/articles/building-a-strong-company-cultureEvery company has a culture. The question isn't whether you'll have one. It's whether you'll create it intentionally or let it emerge by accident. Culture isn't perks. It's whether people feel safe disagreeing with you.Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTcultureleadershipteamshttps://francoinc.com/articles/the-ai-accountability-gaphttps://francoinc.com/articles/the-ai-accountability-gapAI doesn't remove human error. It scales it. When the bot screws up, who is responsible? Most organizations create an accountability vacuum where everyone is involved and no one is accountable.Tue, 13 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTai first principlesaccountabilityleadershiphttps://francoinc.com/articles/why-design-became-ais-most-expensive-ingredienthttps://francoinc.com/articles/why-design-became-ais-most-expensive-ingredientIn 2025, OpenAI acquired io, a hardware company Jony Ive co-founded, in a deal valuing it at about $6.5 billion. Not a model company. Not a chip company. A hardware company. What does that investment in hardware and design tell you about your own implementation?Tue, 16 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTai-designuxai-first-principlesopenaihttps://francoinc.com/articles/why-ai-automation-projects-failhttps://francoinc.com/articles/why-ai-automation-projects-failThere is a statistic floating around that 80% of AI projects never make it past the pilot phase. The reason isn't bad technology. It's automating broken processes. If you automate a bad process, you just scale the chaos.Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTai operationsprocess improvementwiser method