I've been on a listening tour with leaders of privately-held companies. Through those conversations, I've seen three rungs of AI use:

Rung 1: AI for Answers (for me: search, emails, thought partnership)
​Rung 2: AI for Time (for my team: efficiency and productivity)
​Rung 3: AI for Revenue (for my customers: offering new value)

I call it the AI Trust Ladder.

My whole job is helping companies grow by making customers' lives better, so of course I want to catapult everyone to rung 3 immediately.

Yet most companies I've spoken to are sitting somewhere between rung 1 and rung 2.

Then I remember: I went through each of those rungs too.

Every time I try something new with AI, it feels like this image:

Like I'm stepping onto a rung over a bottomless expanse.

With every step so far, I've wondered: Is this when the agents take over my computer, my bank account, and my pickleball game?

What's actually happened: follow-up emails get automatically drafted, a BD system ticks along daily (and regularly beats me up for being too slow at building my pipeline), and my pickleball game is safely in my control (and mediocre, if I'm honest).

It took a while.

Even if our frontier labs are all too happy to throw us into the expanse, our nervous systems (and our customers) can't handle a direct leap to the far reaches of rung 3.

So I resist the catapult. I get curious about where a company actually is, and what the next rung of the trust ladder looks like for them. We don't have to pass through Answers and Time to get to Revenue. But every step has to feel sturdy enough to put your weight on.

How about you? What’s been your trust ladder, and what will it look like to take the next step?