How many £2M ideas are waiting for your permission?

“Do something AI” pressure is real, and every exec I talk to feels it.

But let me be real with you: a lot of AI strategies I see are focussed on doing something expensive, complex, and totally disconnected from what your people actually need.

Organisations try to solve problems they “think” exist, while real solutions are sitting at a desk three metres away.

Just ask your employees.

Even better: empower them to implement AI on their own.

Want a case study? Look at the U.S. National Park Service.

Not exactly a Silicon Valley darling.

They trained facility managers - not engineers or analysts - to solve their own problems using AI.

Two hours. Zero technical background.
Just curiosity, context, and permission.

And that’s where Adam Rymer shined.

His job: Maintenance and facilities. His pain point? Paperwork.

A maintenance request inside the U.S. national parks system is a bureaucratic maze: federal specs, OSHA compliance, ANSI standards, and multi-page PDFs that haven’t been updated since Nixon. Just to get someone to nod yes at a patch of worn-out carpet.

Adam was stuck spending 2–3 days on a single funding request.

“It stinks that I have to fill out so much paperwork for basic funding requests.”

That’s invisible friction no executive ever sees, devouring months of productivity every year.

So Adam did something remarkable:
In 45 minutes, with a GPT tool he built himself, he automated that process.

No IT team involved.

Suddenly, a 3-day task took 2 hours.

Better yet, word spread and Adam became a bit of a local hero:
“Wait, you made that tool? Someone sent me the link last week. I’d blocked off Monday to Wednesday to process a door and window replacement request. Using your tool, I finished before lunch on Monday.”

Early lunch… on a Monday!

That’s the kind of AI that scales, across all 433 parks.

One employee, one 45-minute build, now saves the National Park Service 14,000 days - almost 40 years! - of labour annually.

At £35/hour, that’s a £2M+ productivity gain.

No vendor. No system overhaul. Just operational empowerment.

That’s where true leadership begins:
Invest in empowering the Adam’s and the £2M ideas hiding in plain sight.