Seven postures facing AI: the Disappointed.
I witnessed up close a successful mechanical engineering company bring AI into their Technical Office. The managing director — a committed innovator — had brought in a university start-up and put a significant budget on the table. Everything seemed in order.
Under the surface, expectations weren’t aligned. The technical team thought AI was there to help them do their work better. Management thought it was there to make the sales team independent from the Technical Office when drafting quotes. Two completely different projects under the same name. Nobody had ever put them side by side. The supplier, in all likelihood, hadn’t even noticed the misunderstanding. Or assumed it would sort itself out along the way.
The result: nobody used the solution. Not the technical team, not the sales team. Months of work and a significant budget, and the conclusion was a single sentence: “It doesn’t work for us.”
But the Disappointed isn’t that company. It’s a posture, and that project is only one specimen. You recognise it in the professional who tried ChatGPT on something, came out badly, and shut the door: “it’s not for me.” In the manager whose pilot project sank and who now blocks every new proposal. In the entrepreneur who, after one wrong supplier, no longer trusts anyone. Different situations, the same gesture: they invested, got burned, and turned the failure into a verdict on the technology.
It’s understandable. When you’ve put yourself out there, asked for resources, promised a result, it’s natural to close the wound with a clear diagnosis. “It doesn’t work” is more dignified than “we didn’t manage it well.” And more dignified than “we never agreed among ourselves.”
The blind spot is exactly there. What failed wasn’t AI. It was the design. In the mechanical company, three different positions around the same project — each convinced they understood it: the innovator director, the technical team certain they were the intended users, the sales team who were supposed to change their way of working without knowing it. And a supplier who brought a tool where a shared agreement was needed first. “It doesn’t work for us” closes the case. It’s comfortable. It’s final. And it almost always files away the wrong thing.
If you’re disappointed, the disappointment is legitimate. Let it pass. But before turning it into a verdict, it’s worth going deeper and understanding what actually failed. Then try again, with a different approach.
The verdict closes the door. The question keeps it open.
P.S. In the next article: the Sovereign. The one who looks at AI and sees, first of all, what could be lost.