Post by Melissa Milloway

Every organization has problems that never make it onto a roadmap. They're too small to staff, too time-consuming to fix on the side of your desk, and not urgent enough for anyone to prioritize. They're like a leaky faucet. Annoying, disruptive, and everyone knows it's there. But it's not a burst pipe, so it never quite makes it to the top of the list. At Amazon, I led a learning and visual communications team. One person on my team was the only one who could edit our email templates. If she wasn't available and someone else tried to make a change, the template would break for every employee receiving it. Years later, a developer built a side project that finally solved it. Then he left, and so did the solution. I kept running into problems like these. I could easily rattle off a dozen. Now with AI, they're easier to solve but not with AI alone. The people closest to the problem, the ones who already understand the process, the users, and the gaps, are the ones who can build something useful with AI. That's why I didn't want to build a course about AI. But I wanted to build a course about problem solving that uses AI. I'm collaborating with LinkedIn Learning on an early course creation pilot. This is a 7-part course that walks you through identifying a recurring problem in your organization, building a working proof of concept with AI, and making the case to scale it. Every step uses an example and comes with downloads you can use on your own problem right away. What's a leaky faucet problem in your organization that nobody has gotten around to fixing?