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Rob Collie spent 13 years at Microsoft helping lead business intelligence work in Excel. Even with that technical background, he says that AI initially scared him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t immune to that,\u201d Collie says in a new interview with Entrepreneur<\/em> about the technology\u2019s potential effect on his business and career. He says his \u201cfear turned into excitement\u201d after he began studying how companies can actually put AI to work.<\/p>\n Now, as CEO of the 50-person consulting firm P3 Adaptive<\/a>, Collie is betting that AI will not simply eliminate work. It will change who gets to create software, solve operational problems and become indispensable inside a company. Collie recently published a book about organizational AI strategy called Fair Game<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n His central advice to workers is straightforward: Do not wait to see what AI does to your job. Help your employer use it.<\/p>\n \u201cYou want to be on that train,\u201d Collie says. \u201cThe closer you can get to AI, and the more you can embrace it, the more you can give it a hug, that gives you the opportunity to be nimble.\u201d<\/p>\n That matters because, in Collie\u2019s view, no one can reliably predict which roles will change most or how quickly. However, workers can develop practical AI skills that make them agents of change rather than passive observers.<\/p>\n Collie says that the best way someone can AI-proof their career is to become an active adopter of AI at work, not waiting to see if the technology replaces them.\u00a0<\/p>\n He advises workers to learn to apply AI in a real business context beyond using a general chatbot for one-time tasks. He also tells workers to become part of the company\u2019s \u201cadoption team\u201d by identifying practical workflows AI can improve.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou can blow people\u2019s minds with this stuff,\u201d Collie says. \u201cYou can be the AI expert at your company in relatively short order, and that\u2019s the approach that I\u2019ve been taking with my company.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Collie says that workers can build or help create specialized AI assistants that use company-specific instructions, documents and data. He notes that no one can reliably predict where AI is headed, or how their job will change, so they should focus on developing agility rather than betting on any one job in particular.\u00a0<\/p>\n Collie urges workers to use AI to strengthen their judgment and productivity, not replace thinking. His preferred employees are \u201cAI-first,\u201d meaning that their first question when approaching a task is what kind of AI system could help them do it better.\u00a0<\/p>\n He also encourages workers to leverage business knowledge when using AI. Collie says that people who understand their company\u2019s processes are more likely to build helpful tools with AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n Collie does not deny that AI will displace some workers. But he believes employers make a mistake when they view the technology only as a headcount-reduction tool.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re missing some of the things that it can do for you,\u201d he says. AI can provide capabilities a company did not previously have, rather than merely replace existing tasks, he adds.<\/p>\n Still, he sees particular risk for entry-level roles where employees can become productive quickly. His test is simple: How much training and organizational knowledge does a worker need before doing the job competently?<\/p>\n \u201cThe entry-level jobs that are the most replaceable are the ones where a new hire can be truly productive in the first two weeks,\u201d Collie says.<\/p>\n Call-center work is one clear example. These jobs often involve structured policies, decision trees and predictable response flows, all information that can be documented and supplied to an AI system. In contrast, roles that require years of accumulated judgment, nuanced relationships and substantial company-specific experience may be harder to fully automate.<\/p>\n Collie uses the technical concept of an AI\u2019s \u201ccontext window\u201d to explain the difference. An AI can absorb only a limited amount of information at once. If the knowledge required to perform a job fits into that practical limit, the role may be more exposed. If it takes a long time and substantial experience to become effective, AI may have more difficulty replacing the worker outright.<\/p>\n For young professionals, however, the threat extends beyond individual jobs. Collie said many companies appear to have become hesitant to hire inexperienced candidates while they try to understand AI\u2019s impact.<\/p>\n \u201cThe zero-years-experience job is now turning into, like, a three-years-experience job,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n He believes some of that pullback may reverse as employers gain confidence about where human talent still adds the most value. But job-seekers should not count on a return to the old entry-level ladder.<\/p>\n Collie\u2019s career has long centered on making sophisticated technology accessible to people outside large enterprises. At Microsoft, he led business-intelligence features in Excel 2007 before joining the early Power Pivot effort. That eventually became Power BI, a business analytics platform that turns raw data into interactive charts and dashboards. He later founded P3 Adaptive to help smaller companies use tools that had once been largely out of reach.<\/p>\n That experience shapes how he sees the AI moment. He rejects the idea that businesses need to build their own large language models or hire elite AI researchers before getting started.<\/p>\n \u201cAI is just a new form of computing that we haven\u2019t had before,\u201d Collie says. He adds that companies need to learn its strengths, limitations and practical uses, much as they learned to use traditional software.<\/p>\n Off-the-shelf chatbots can boost individual productivity, Collie says, but they cannot automatically understand a company\u2019s specific context. For example, ask a general-purpose AI tool to write a proposal, and it may produce generic, lowest-common-denominator copy. The difference comes when a business gives the system clear instructions and relevant internal knowledge.<\/p>\n Collie compares that process to onboarding a highly educated new hire. An AI may know a vast amount about the world, but it knows nothing about an individual organization.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you hired someone who had a Ph.D. in everything but had never met your business, they wouldn\u2019t be useful on day one,\u201d he said. \u201cYou would need to give them training.\u201d<\/p>\n Collie calls those written instructions \u201chandbooks.\u201d They explain what the AI\u2019s role is, which information it should use, what standards it should follow and how it should communicate.<\/p>\n A marketing assistant could be supplied with a handbook that captures a company\u2019s brand voice, audience, products and approval rules. Instead of opening a chatbot that must be re-briefed every time, an employee could work with a specialized assistant that already has the relevant context.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time it wakes up, it needs to be handed that manual before it starts working with you,\u201d Collie says. \u201cThat is super easy to do.\u201d<\/p>\n He argues that business knowledge, not advanced technical training, is the starting point. A manager who knows how a team handles customer issues, or a marketer who knows the company\u2019s tone, can help create the handbook. Technical employees may still be needed to connect systems and data securely, but they should not be isolated from the people closest to the work.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t treat AI as a technology problem,\u201d Collie says. \u201cIt\u2019s a business problem. It\u2019s about teaching it about your business.\u201d<\/p>\n Collie is applying that philosophy inside P3 Adaptive. The firm has frozen hiring while it retrains its current staff and rethinks roles built around dashboard development. Going forward, he said, workers will need to be \u201cAI-first\u201d in how they approach their work.<\/p>\n That does not mean allowing AI to think for them. It means using it to handle routine work, accelerate drafting and coding, organize context and extend what skilled professionals can accomplish.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not using AI to replace their brain,\u201d Collie says. \u201cIt\u2019s AI to take on lots and lots of stuff for them to make them more effective and more productive.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Rob Collie spent 13 years at Microsoft helping lead business intelligence work in Excel. Even with that technical background, he says that AI initially scared him.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t immune to that,\u201d Collie says in a new interview with Entrepreneur<\/em> about the technology\u2019s potential effect on his business and career. He says his \u201cfear turned into excitement\u201d after he began studying how companies can actually put AI to work.<\/p>\n Now, as CEO of the 50-person consulting firm P3 Adaptive<\/a>, Collie is betting that AI will not simply eliminate work. It will change who gets to create software, solve operational problems and become indispensable inside a company. Collie recently published a book about organizational AI strategy called Fair Game<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHow to have an AI-proof career<\/h2>\n
The jobs most at-risk from AI<\/h2>\n
AI is a new form of computing<\/h2>\n
Build an AI handbook<\/h2>\n
Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n
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