AI Implementation: A practical guide to 6 levels of artificial intelligence maturity, with a real-world illustration

"Sometimes it’s the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine,” Alan Turing said.

Much ink has been spilled about the innovative use of artificial intelligence in the tech sector, healthcare, finance, and even our own marketing industry. In San Francisco, Tel Aviv, and Beijing. But I found a helpful and inspirational story of customer-first AI in a place many AI aficionados would consider surprising.

Redding, California is just 235 miles north of Silicon Valley, but a world away from the global tech hub. While Silicon Valley is known for data lakes, outdoor-oriented Redding is known for Shasta Lake. Redding is home to Pathway Church, led by a senior pastor with 44 years of experience – Bill Giovannetti.

And yet, Giovannetti and his team have already reached an advanced stage of AI maturity in their organization.

So I had an in-depth conversation with Giovannetti to unpack the levels his organization went through, to give you ideas for navigating your organization’s journey.

But let’s start with the challenge. Even though AI has gotten a healthy dose of hype these past few years, only four percent of employees use it daily, and 67 percent of employees have never used it, according to a Gallup article published last week.

The Challenge: Low employee engagement with AI

I reached out to Gallup to get more insights from their study about AI in the workplace, and here’s what Kate Den Houter, Research Associate, Gallup, told me:

MarketingSherpa: Why do you think there is such a big disconnect between the hype/coverage of AI and its actual usage by employees? Does fear play a role?

Den Houter: AI is new and exciting, with nearly limitless potential applications. While organizational leaders are expressing an eagerness to incorporate AI tools and technologies into their business practices, the majority of organizations are still at the start of their AI journeys.

Whether it be cost, a lack of personnel with the skills needed to implement and oversee AI integration, or a general wariness to dive into a new and rather unregulated space, organizations appear to be taking their time when it comes to AI adoption.

Rather than implementing organization-wide initiatives, many companies seem to be engaging in small-scale tests and experiments with select personnel or teams to see how they can best incorporate AI into their current systems and processes.

At present, just one third of employees say that their organization has begun integrating new AI technology or tools to improve business practices. As such, I would not necessarily say it is fear, but more so employees’ lack of familiarity and/or understanding around what AI is and how it can be utilized, as well as their awareness of what types of AI tools – if any – are available to them within their organization.

MarketingSherpa: There’s a chart [in your report] that shows how much leaders use AI for certain tasks, versus managers or individual contributors. But do you have a sense of how much leaders are actually personally bought into AI and using it in general, versus giving vague direction to their teams based on the overall hype/interest in AI?

Den Houter: I would say that buy-in is high. Ninety-three percent of CHROs (chief human resources officers) have said their organization has begun utilizing AI technologies and tools to improve business practices. Two in 10 leaders report using AI at least a few times a week. When looking exclusively at CHROs, more than half (53%) report using AI at least a few times a week.

With that being said, our data does suggest a lack of clear communication, guidance, and training around AI. Only 15% of employees say their organization has communicated a clear plan or strategy for integrating AI technology into organizational business practices. Seventy percent of employees say their organization does not have guidelines or policies around using AI at work, and almost half of employees (47%) say their organization has not offered any formal or informal training around AI.

MarketingSherpa: How important is it for companies to offer their employees a tailored AI – whether to their industry or even specific company or role within that company – versus just general AI? Does that impact adoption?

Den Houter: I think this will vary greatly depending on the organization’s goals and/or purpose for using AI. Some organizations are choosing to create their own tools to ensure data privacy and security. If organizations decide to utilize more commonplace and/or user-friendly AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT), adoption will likely be easier because employees will already have a level of familiarity with how the tool can be utilized.

With that being said, organizations would be well advised to establish clear guidelines for AI usage to ensure that this technology is serving as a tool to support organizational efficiency rather than a liability.

Level #1: Education and ‘play’ with general tools

Now that we have a general look at the challenge, let’s look at the story of Giovannetti’s organization, how they implemented AI, and the stages of adoption they went through.

Please note – I’m using the word customers often in this article because I’m writing to marketers and entrepreneurs, but for these specific ‘customers’ are more commonly referred to as congregants or community members.

If you’re a MarketingSherpa reader, you’re probably well past this stage. But I think it’s worth noting in case you’re working with a laggard organization that still needs to get going – which is still a surprisingly large pool of employees two years after ChatGPT first rocked the world, according to the Gallup poll. And as Den Houter mentioned, lack of training is widespread.

I originally met Giovannetti in the AI Guild (the precursor of which started 240 days before ChatGPT), where he has participated passionately for years. I’ve seen first-hand his dedication to education, both receiving and giving – he even taught a course in the AI Guild (the AI Guild is underwritten by MeclabsAI, the parent company of MarketingSherpa).

And while I didn’t know him before, I’m guessing a passion for learning hasn’t suddenly spring up. In fact, when we talked, he was surrounded by walls of books. “What do you want? Greek, Hebrew? We can look anything up,” he told me.

So – to use a strained analogy – while AI may seem Greek to you today, the more you surround you and your team with it, the more comfortable you’ll get.

But don’t just be a passive student. “I signed up on day one for ChatGPT. Soon as I could sign up for it. I signed up for it, and I started using it, and I was showing everybody – ‘check this out.’ Everybody's blown away,” he then laughed and said, “I did the same thing with AOL.”

So don’t just sit back and learn – dive in. I was trying to think of the best word for this stage and I came up with ‘play.’ ‘Shoshin’ might be a better word, but less known to most readers. I’m no Zen Buddhist master, but my understanding is that ‘shoshin’ is having an open mind, similar to the way a child discovers something for the first time. Openness. Eagerness. A lack of preconceptions.

For a change this disruptive, I prefer that approach. Because on the other side is fear, change, anxiety, uncertainty. And that will only hold you back.

Level #2: Leveraging more specific AI tools

Giovannetti introduced his team to MeclabsAI nine months ago. MeclabsAI has more specific tools than the general AI he started playing with. Let’s take a look at a before-and-after example to see the effect it has had.

He has a team of 25 full-time employees at his church, in addition to 25 part-time employees. This pastoral staff serves more than 4,000 people who walk through the church doors every week.

However, there was a time when no one could walk through those doors – during Covid, when the church building had to close. To keep their flock engaged and serve their community, the team moved everything outside and organized prayer walks – walking past homes and saying a silent blessing for the people inside each home. They prayed for 50,000 homes in three months.

They recently organized prayer walks again, but this time they were able to pray for 63,000 homes and got 60 percent more people in their congregation involved. This required major planning – for example, the team had color-coded maps of all the streets in the area to know what homes they had already covered and where they should send people next.

“It was a strategic operation that was fully supported, planned, enabled, and communicated using AI tools from MeclabsAI,” Giovannetti said. For example, the team used MeclabsAI’s built-in Project Planner expert, Email Specialist expert, and the copywriter experts (like Copywriter - Blog Posts).

Another example was inspired by an article he read, for a project he’ll be launching soon. “Twelve thousand people baptized in historic California event, by a few churches in Southern California. They all said, ‘Let's all do baptisms on the same day.’ It was on Pentecost Sunday, 50 days after Easter weekend and Passover. And I'm like, dang it! I wish I had known about this because we had just baptized a whole bunch of people,” Giovannetti said.

He shared the original article, along with his idea, to the Project Planner expert  in MeclabsAI and told it to put together a comprehensive plan, including calendar dates in a chart, along with a mission statement and goals. He then asked the Conversion Pro expert to write an inspirational proposal to the district superintendent to encourage implementation of this plan with the district executive committee. And finally had Conversion Pro write the website for the initiative, focused on an ideal customer profile (ICP) of pastors leading other churches in his denomination.

Level #3: Building custom AI tools

Artificial intelligence is a tool. But if you just think of it like a hammer or a screwdriver, you’re selling it (and your possible uses of it) short.

I think a better analogy is this – I have an electric lawnmower. And it has a big battery. I can pop that battery out of the mower and put it into a chainsaw, or a string trimmer, or even a portable power station to give some juice to household items during a power outage.

In a similar way, Giovannetti built his own experts, app, and libraries in the Engineering console in MeclabsAI.

“As a guy who speaks every week pretty much, has to do prep and ideation for those talks, [the value I get from AI is] through the roof. I'm still probably spending as much time. It's just a value I have. But the depth of research that I can do, and the speed with which I can do it, I can do way more research than ever before.”

For example, he built an AI expert called the Scripture Digger. He can simply give it a scripture from the Bible – like Psalm 23 – and it gives him all sorts of questions to spur his sermon. He then takes one of those questions and gives it to the Sermon Upgrader expert he built, based on Then, rules of communication that were shared in the AI Guild. Sermon Upgrader helps him answer the question in a format he can preach. “It'll print this verse out in Hebrew for me, and I could study the Hebrew. It'll dig into a specific word in Hebrew or Greek for me. And it will help me with communication,” Giovannetti said.

When he expanded these AI capabilities across his entire staff, the efficiency improvements compounded. “Admin. Project planning. We're able to do in half an hour what used to take a team of four or five people half a day,” he said.

Level #4: Sell your custom AI tools to people who have a similar role as you (B2B)

Giovannetti became a MeclabsAI reseller to provide the experts, apps, and libraries from Level #2 (those already built into MeclabsAI) and Level #3 (the custom ones he created) to pastors and ministry leaders. He calls the offering MinistryAI.

Creative Sample #1: Greek/Hebrew sermon prep assistant app from MinistryAI

While this article if focused on one specific use case on this one industry, I hope you can see how what Giovannetti has pioneered applies to many industries. You can use AI to build customer experts, apps, and libraries that help you make your team’s work output quicker, faster, and better based on the knowledge you have accumulated in your career. Then you can turn the AI tools you’ve built into a product to help others in a similar role as you improve their work as well.

Level #5: Sell customer-facing AI tools (B2C)

Up until this point, Giovannetti was using artificial intelligence behind the scenes to improve the quality and efficiency of his output. He then created a B2C offering to overcome a key challenge he faces. “How can I better shepherd my people? How can I better pastor my people? But also on a kind of a more pragmatic side, I've got a very big church, and I don't have time to spend personal time with everybody,” he said.

When people see him, they often stop and ask how he is, and then ask him one of two things – a specific question about the Bible and theology, or for specific guidance for what they have going on in their life.

In the past, he has tried many ways to get people this help as the church has grown – from internet tools like email or blog posts to in-person community like small groups. But he realized, this was a perfect use case for custom AIs, and he got to work building.

“This will give an answer from my perspective, whereas if you go to ChatGPT or general AI – I started with ChatGPT, I thought it was great – but if you pick a theological topic, there’s such a diverse variety of opinions, which is fine. But if you're asking me as a pastor, I want to tell you what I believe,” he said.

This is true in theology, but it’s true in every industry where expertise matters – if you coach, train, or otherwise have any thought leadership on a topic.

In Giovannetti’s case, his thought leadership is extensive. He’s written 30 books, along with several special edition magazines that have sold on newsstands nationwide.

So he built that content into libraries in MeclabsAI, and then created AI-powered experts to help address the most common questions he receives. He calls these nine AI-powered mentors ‘your spiritual A-team’ in his new Modern Wisdom offering.

Creative Sample #2: Mobile version of Modern Wisdom homepage

“I can get closer to where people are at facing their daily issues. Now with AI, and especially with the way MeclabsAI set up CFDs (customer-facing devices) I could be in everybody's pocket,” he said.

Level #6: Help others better serve their customers (B2B2C)

Getting to the next level, Giovannetti determined he do more than just help other religious leaders behind the scenes – he could help them with their own ‘customers’ as well.

A church is a very complex machine. For example, Giovannetti’s church has 20 acres, three buildings, and 4,000 people coming through the doors every week – which means, there is a lot going on. So he built a set of AI guides – The Navigator for Pathway Church – to help congregants access everything the church has to offer:

• Pathway Navigator helps with schedules and events
• The Sermon Guide goes deeper into the sermons
• Your Group Guide helps congregants find groups and ministries
• Your Giving Guide helps people decide how they want to financially support the church (and also mentions, ‘there’s absolutely no pressure’)

Creative Sample #3: Chat with AI expert ‘Pathway Navigator’

While solving his church’s problems, Giovannetti realizes this can help many other churches serve their congregants as well, so he built it with that in mind. For example, the imagery for his experts is mountain based since that suits his church’s location, but he also has versions with suburban and urban imagery to help other churches.

Results

Unlike a traditional MarketingSherpa case study, we don’t have A/B test results or return on ad spend to share.

When I pressed Giovannetti for some metrics, he said, “Our output is four to eightfold more in terms of emails, social media, even writing stuff.”

He also mentioned that they’ve gotten 20 percent more attendees, and the church is in a really healthy place financially. And while he couldn’t attribute all of this to AI, he did say, “Overall staff team efficiency and output is a critical piece of the growth we've been seeing.”

How to improve your organization’s AI maturity

As you can see from this detailed exploration, an organization's journey through AI maturity can lead to significant changes in workflow, efficiency, outreach, and ultimately, growth. Whether you're leading a church, a business, or any group facing the fast-evolving landscape of AI technologies, embracing these lessons and adopting a forward-thinking approach can position you for success.

If you’re looking to improve your organization’s AI maturity, here are three key lessons from my conversation with Giovannetti that really stood out.

• Walk the walk: There are many boards and C-suite executives pushing their employees to use AI because of all the press it’s been getting. And sometimes, they don’t know how to use it themselves, and don’t really embrace it. Giovannetti has a clear passion for AI, and roles up his sleeves to serve as a role model for this team.

• Create a space: I asked Giovannetti what he learned from his pastoral work that can help business leaders with change management. After all, human nature is human nature and helping someone with addiction must be a much harder change to make than adopting AI at work. He talked about free will, moral suasion, and the necessity of creating an environment where people can make a difficult change. “I can't force you, but I can create a space in which you can say your ‘yes,’ and step into it. I can create a space where you can say ‘yes’ and know that you'll be helped along when you feel it's impossible. You've tried 15 times to quit this habit, and you failed every time? Well, you know what, you've got some friends. Let's do this together,” he said.
   
• Blunder forward: He’s seen people and organizations decide not to act because they didn’t feel like they knew enough about artificial intelligence. If you find yourself in this boat, remember, this AI story comes from the unlikeliest of places – a church in a small community led by a pastor who started his career back when phones were rotary, not smart. If he can do it, you can too! “Blunder forward. Just go for it. Just try it,” Giovannetti advised. “Blunder forward! Don't let fear paralyze you from getting into this thing.”

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