The ‘Non-Technical Leader’: Why That Title Is Holding Back AI in Your SME.
I recently heard a devastating phrase at an innovation event: “The IT department is where great AI ideas go to die.”
The reason? A very common excuse: too many leaders declare themselves “non-technical” and completely delegate the process.
They expect the IT team to deliver a magic, plug-and-play solution that neatly hides the complexity of AI beneath a software layer. But that approach is slow, expensive, and, frankly, obsolete.
AI is Not a Tool, It is a Criterion
The real dilemma of AI is that it is not simply software; it is a new form of thinking and decision-making.
The Financial Statement Case:
If a CEO today said, “I am a ‘non-financial’ leader, so I won’t read the balance sheet,” their company would be in serious trouble. In the same way, a leader today cannot afford to be ‘non-technical’ with AI.
If you, as a director in Mallorca, refuse to understand how this tool works, you automatically become the bottleneck of innovation, without realizing it.
Let’s be clear: you don’t need to code. You need to know how to do three key things that only you, with your judgment and experience, can do:
- Know How to Ask: Understand what questions to ask the AI (the art of strategic prompting) to get data that strengthens your strategy.
- Distinguish Fact from Hallucination: AI makes mistakes. Only your irreplaceable human critical judgment can distinguish real data from an “hallucination” (AI’s creative error).
- Define Delegation: Know exactly what tasks to delegate to the machine (low-value work) and what you must reserve for human strategy and interaction (high-value work).
The Solution: Lead with Judgment
The leaders who are climbing the organizational ladder are the ones who are already adopting AI as their personal critical thinking assistant. AI is not delegated, it is led.
My work as an AI consultant, especially in the Ongoing Support and Optimization phase, is to provide the clarity and training necessary. The goal is to give you the criterion to lead the adoption of AI in your company, not to turn you into an engineer.
If you close yourself off to using AI as it is today, you are not being strategic. You are being an obstacle to profitability and growth.
So, the real question is this: Are you delegating AI to avoid it, or are you using it to amplify your own decision-making capacity and lead the future of your business?