Adapting AI Automation: Lessons in Flexibility and Resilience

That Time We Completely Bombed a Project (And Then Didn't!)

Okay, friends, gather 'round because I need to tell you about the time we absolutely, spectacularly face-planted on what should have been a slam-dunk project. I'm talking full-on disaster mode — the kind where you're sitting at your desk at 2 AM, surrounded by empty coffee cups, wondering if maybe you should've listened to your mom and become an accountant instead.

Picture this: We get this call from a big client (and I mean BIG — the kind that makes you do a little happy dance when you hang up the phone). They need an AI automation thingy-ma-jig, and we're all "Oh yeah, we've totally got this!"

I actually remember turning to my team and saying — and I quote — "This'll be done by Thursday, easy peasy."

Narrator voice: It was not, in fact, easy peasy.

You know that feeling when you're trying to untangle Christmas lights and the more you pull, the worse it gets? That was us with this project. The data we needed to train the AI was about as cooperative as my toddler when it's bedtime. Every time we thought we'd fixed something, three new problems would pop up like some twisted game of whack-a-mole.

By week two, our "simple" project had turned into what I can only describe as a technological dumpster fire. The client was sending emails with subject lines like "Just checking in!" (translation: WHERE IS MY PROJECT?!), and I was stress-eating so many cookies that my kids started hiding them from me.

Here's where it gets really fun (and by fun, I mean mortifying). We had to have The Call. You know the one — where you admit to the client that you're basically drowning in a sea of your own overconfidence.

"So... remember how we said Thursday?" I squeaked into the phone. "Well, funny story..."

But here's the thing — and this is why I'm sharing this whole embarrassing saga with you — that phone call changed everything. Instead of firing us on the spot (which, honestly, I was half-expecting), the client said something that knocked me sideways: "Okay, so what do we do now?"

We spent the entire next day in our conference room, which by then looked like a tornado had hit a office supply store. Pizza boxes everywhere, whiteboards covered in what I can only describe as beautiful chaos, and my business partner literally lying on the floor staring at the ceiling going, "What if we just... didn't do it the way we always do it?"

And that, my friends, was our lightbulb moment!

We scrapped EVERYTHING. All our fancy plans, our tried-and-true methods, our "but we've always done it this way" mentality — out the window! It felt like jumping off a cliff, except the cliff was made of spreadsheets and the bottom was... well, we didn't know what the bottom was.

For the next three weeks, we basically lived at the office. (My dog started giving me judgmental looks when I'd stumble home at midnight.) But something magical was happening — we were actually solving the problem! Not the way we'd originally planned, but in this weird, wonky, wonderfully creative way that none of us had seen coming.

The client loved it. LOVED IT! They actually asked if we could do three more projects for them. (I may have cried a little. Okay, a lot.)

So what's the moral of this rambling story?

Well, first off, that cookie stash I mentioned? Essential business equipment. But more importantly — and stay with me here because this is the good stuff — sometimes you have to completely fail before you can succeed. Like, spectacularly, embarrassingly, "oh-my-god-what-have-we-done" kind of fail.

Because here's what nobody tells you: That moment when everything falls apart? That's not the end of the story. That's just the really uncomfortable middle part where all the good stuff happens.

These days, whenever we start a new project, we have this little ritual. Someone always asks, "But what if it all goes sideways?" And someone else always answers, "Then we'll figure it out, just like we did with the Tuesday Thursday disaster of 2023!"

(Yes, we named it. No, I'm not sorry.)

Look, I could sit here and pretend we're these ultra-professional, never-make-mistakes kind of people. But where's the fun in that? The truth is, we're all just figuring it out as we go, making messes and cleaning them up and hopefully learning something along the way.

So the next time you're staring down a project that's gone completely off the rails, remember: You're not failing, you're just in the really uncomfortable middle part. Grab some cookies, call a friend (or a client!), and remember that sometimes the best solutions come from the biggest disasters.

And hey, if nothing else, you'll have a great story to tell later!