🎮 The Next Input — Issue #187

In partnership with

⚡ The Briefing — 60 sec

• Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 is a version of Mythos the public can access today It took me until today to see the pattern: Haiku, Sonnet, Opus... now Fable. I might be a dummy. Anywho, this model is... interesting. If you're doing highly focused work, it's an absolute godsend. If you're a generalist? It'll feel very, very strange.

• Forrester finds agentic AI stuck in enterprise pilots Not my clients at Cylentis 😉. But the broader point stands: most organisations are still trapped in pilot purgatory. Lots of demos. Lots of workshops. Not a lot of production value.

• AI modernises Asia-Pacific trade amid adoption surge Quietly, one of the biggest AI stories isn't chatbots. It's the plumbing. Trade, logistics, customs, documentation, compliance — the boring stuff that keeps economies moving.

🛠️ The Playbook — Pilot Escape Velocity Engine

Mission
Move AI initiatives from endless pilots into measurable, production-grade business outcomes.

Difficulty
Intermediate

Build time
3–5 hours

ROI
Transforms AI from an innovation project into an operational capability with measurable business value.

0) Why This Matters

Enterprise AI has developed a nasty habit.

Pilot.

Workshop.

Steering committee.

Innovation showcase.

Pilot extension.

Another steering committee.

Meanwhile, the organisations actually creating value are quietly automating workflows, reducing operational friction, and shipping production systems.

The biggest challenge in AI isn't building prototypes anymore.

It's escaping them.

1) Architecture

2) Workflow

1. Identify one measurable business problem.

2. Build a narrowly scoped AI workflow around that problem.

3. Connect company knowledge and operational systems.

4. Automate the highest-friction steps first.

5. Measure business outcomes weekly.

6. Scale successful workflows across adjacent functions.

3) Example Prompts

Pilot Assessment Prompt

You are an AI programme advisor.

Review the following AI pilot.

Identify:
- why it has not reached production
- technical blockers
- organisational blockers
- governance blockers
- ROI gaps

Recommend a production rollout plan.

Workflow Automation Prompt

Analyse the following business process.

Identify:
- manual bottlenecks
- repetitive work
- approval delays
- reporting overhead
- automation opportunities

Prioritise opportunities by ROI.

Production Readiness Prompt

Review this AI solution.

Determine:
- whether it is production-ready
- governance requirements
- monitoring requirements
- operational risks
- scaling considerations

Provide a go/no-go recommendation.

4) Guardrails

• Tie every AI initiative to a measurable business outcome.

• Avoid pilots without executive ownership.

• Build around workflows, not model capabilities.

• Establish monitoring before scaling.

• Ground outputs against trusted data sources.

• Kill low-value pilots quickly.

5) Pilot Rollout — 3 hours

1. Select one process with clear operational pain.

2. Define baseline metrics before implementation.

3. Build a minimum viable workflow.

4. Connect retrieval and automation layers.

5. Measure results after one week.

6. Expand only after proven ROI.

6) Metrics

• Hours saved

• Workflow completion speed

• Operational cost reduction

• Employee adoption rate

• Automation coverage

• Escalation frequency

• ROI per workflow

Pro Tip: The difference between an AI pilot and an AI product is usually a dashboard with business metrics attached to it.

🎯 The Arsenal — Tools & Platforms

• Anthropic Claude Fable · focused reasoning and specialist workflows · Link

• OpenAI GPT-5.5 · general-purpose execution and analysis · Link

• Pinecone Pinecone · retrieval and operational memory · Link

• Microsoft Power Automate · workflow automation and orchestration · Link

• Grafana Labs Grafana · business outcome measurement · Link

Copy-paste prompt block:

You are an AI transformation consultant.

Review my current AI initiatives.

Identify:
- pilots that should be scaled
- pilots that should be killed
- workflows suitable for automation
- governance gaps
- operational bottlenecks

Return:
1. production readiness assessment
2. highest ROI opportunities
3. implementation roadmap
4. measurement framework
5. risks
6. executive summary

💡 Free Office Hours

Most organisations don't have an AI problem. They have an execution problem. The technology is largely here. The operational discipline often isn't.

Book here: https://calendly.com

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🕹️ Game Over

The AI winners won't be the companies running the most pilots.

They'll be the companies quietly deleting the word "pilot" from their vocabulary.

— Aaron Automating the boring. Amplifying the brilliant.

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