# Man and Machine: The \#Retool

![Man and Machine: The \#Retool](/writing/man-and-machine/the-retool/assets/hero.jpg)

Most executives ask: How can I use AI?

The better question: how do we retool the entire company around it?

At Dwolla, about 50% of our team now uses AI in what I'd call industrialized ways\. Not dabbling\. Not the occasional \#ChatGPT summary\. Full workflows, rebuilt from scratch around AI as the primary tool\.

Legal drafts contracts with AI assistance\. Finance models scenarios faster than ever\. Engineering ships features at a pace that wasn't possible two years ago\. Sales does research in minutes that used to take days\.

The ROI isn't theoretical\. Two of us built a full data room that would have taken a team of consultants weeks\. The output was indistinguishable\.

Here's what I've learned about making this work:

1\. You have to give people permission to experiment\. Real permission, not lip service\.  
2\. The people who lean in become 3\-5x more productive\. Fast\.  
3\. The ones who resist aren't bad employees\. They just haven't had their moment yet\. Find the use case that clicks for them\.  
4\. Leadership has to model it\. If the CEO isn't using it, why would anyone else?

We are not done\. Not even close\. But the gap between companies that are retooling and those that are not is widening every quarter\.

The question is not whether AI will change your business\.

It already is\. Let's talk \-dg

\#ManAndMachine \#AI \#CIO \#CFO \#Leadership \#CEO \#FutureOfWork \#Dwolla

## Sources

- [Original LinkedIn post](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7432012691122147328/)