Identifying Your Top 3 AI Opportunities

We're in the home stretch — Day 28 of 30. You've learned what AI is, how to use it, and where the risks are. Now let's get strategic. This is a structured exercise that should take about 30 minutes and give your leadership team a concrete starting point for AI investment.

Grab a whiteboard (or a doc) and draw a 2x2 grid:

```
HIGH IMPACT
|
Quick Wins | Strategic Bets
(Do first) | (Plan carefully)
─────────────────┼──────────────────
Nice-to-haves | Money Pits
(Backlog) | (Avoid for now)
|
LOW IMPACT
HIGH FEASIBILITY ← → LOW FEASIBILITY
```

Step 1: List your candidates (15 min)
Ask each department head: "What are your 3 most time-consuming repetitive processes?" Aim for 10-15 candidates total. Examples:
• Customer support email triage
• Weekly reporting and data aggregation
• Sales proposal first drafts
• Employee onboarding Q&A
• Code review for standard patterns
• Meeting notes and follow-ups

Step 2: Score each candidate (10 min)
For each one, rate two things on a 1-5 scale:
• Impact: How much time/money would this save? How many people does it affect?
• Feasibility: How available is the data? How complex is the integration? Can you use off-the-shelf tools or do you need custom work?

Step 3: Plot and pick (5 min)
Put each candidate on the grid. Your top 3 AI opportunities are the ones in the "Quick Wins" quadrant — high impact AND high feasibility. Start there. Ignore everything else for now.

Why this works: It prevents the two most common AI mistakes — starting with the most technically interesting project (often low impact) or starting with the most impactful project (often low feasibility). Quick wins build momentum, prove ROI, and give your team the experience they need before tackling strategic bets.