AI for Humans: Why the Best AI Strategy Starts with Values, Not Technology
You've been in the meetings. Someone from IT presents a roadmap. There's a timeline, a budget, and a list of use cases sorted by department. It looks thorough. It is thorough. And it's missing the only thing that actually determines whether any of this works.
Before your next AI strategy session, try The Values-First Checklist. It's six questions that take about ten minutes to answer, and they'll tell you whether your AI strategy is built on something solid or something that's about to crumble. I've watched million-dollar initiatives fail because nobody asked these questions. You don't have to make the same mistake.
The Strategy Everyone Makes
AI strategy, as it's typically practiced, follows a predictable pattern. Identify processes that could be automated. Estimate time savings. Calculate ROI. Build a rollout plan. Train people. Deploy.
It's rational. It's logical. It's also backwards.
A Boston Consulting Group study found that 60% of employees are concerned about AI's impact on their jobs. Not uncertain. Concerned. That concern doesn't show up in process maps or ROI calculations, but it absolutely shows up in adoption rates.
When you build an AI strategy around technology without accounting for the humans who have to use it, you get beautiful roadmaps that lead nowhere.
What Values-First Actually Means
I work with something called the Valuegraphics Database. A million surveys across 152 languages, tracking the 56 values that drive human behavior. Not attitudes. Not preferences. Values the deep drivers that shape what people actually do, regardless of what they say in focus groups.
When we apply this lens to AI strategy, we ask different questions.
Instead of "Which processes can be automated?" we ask, "Which values might this automation threaten?" Instead of "How do we train people?" we ask, "How do we align this with what people already care about?"
Same technology. Same organization. Entirely different conversation.
The Values-First Checklist
Here are the six questions your AI strategy needs to answer.
1. Which values are we about to poke?
Every AI deployment touches human values, whether you realize it or not. If you're automating a task someone takes pride in (Personal Responsibility), they'll resist. If you're introducing unpredictability into a role that values stability (Security), they'll resist. If you're threatening relationships people depend on (Relationships, Belonging), they'll resist.
Map your use cases against the values they affect. The resistance you'll face is already predictable if you bother to look.
2. What does the AI protect, not just produce?
Employees don't want to hear about efficiency. They want to know what's being protected. Their expertise. Their relevance. Their sense of being good at their job. Find the protection story for every deployment.
3. Who has high Employment Security needs, and what do they need to hear?
Employment Security ranks 9th out of 56 values globally. People who score high on this value need more than reassurance; they need evidence. Concrete examples of people whose jobs became more secure because of AI, not less. These folks won't believe words. They'll believe the proof.
4. Where are the Loyalty landmines?
Loyalty (ranked 7th) can work for you or against you. Some employees will resist AI out of loyalty to colleagues they think it threatens. Others will resist out of loyalty to "how we've always done things." Find out where the loyalty lines are drawn before you trip over them.
5. How are we activating Personal Growth?
Personal Growth ranks 6th. If you can frame AI as a growth opportunity rather than a replacement threat, you flip the script. But this only works if you actually provide growth pathways, new skills to learn, new capabilities to develop, and new ways to add value.
6. What's the Relationship strategy?
Relationships rank 2nd. Adoption spreads through relationships, not org charts. Who are the informal influencers who could make or break this rollout? How are you enrolling them? Not as official champions, but as genuine advocates?
Why This Changes Everything
Organizations that answer these six questions before building their AI roadmap report something counterintuitive: the technical implementation gets easier.
When you've already addressed the values concerns, you're not fighting the human element during deployment. Training sessions become collaborative instead of contentious. Resistance that would have emerged three months in gets surfaced and resolved before launch.
I've seen this happen enough times to know it's not a coincidence. The organizations that treat AI as a human challenge first and a technology challenge second consistently outperform the ones that do it the other way around.
This is the work I help companies do. Not selecting the right AI tools, there are plenty of consultants for that. But ensure those tools actually get used by understanding what the humans involved actually care about.
The Values-First Checklist is how you start that conversation. Six questions. Ten minutes. A completely different foundation for everything that follows.
Technology is the easy part. People are the hard part.
Might as well start with the hard part.
Remember: if you know what people value, you can change what happens next.
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