AI in practice

In 2026 mailboxes and meetings are still the main pain points for employees

We can talk about how amazing AI is and how agents will bring huge benefits to the world, but the reality of most large organisations is many miles away from this. My head is inside the most recent AI developments: listening to podcasts, building my own platform, helping individuals build new tools and websites. But of course, this is not most people ;-)

What happened when I just asked

When I started talking to employees from these organisations and just asked if they were using AI at all, many of them did not. They weren't even aware if there was an AI tool available to them, let alone have any idea how they could use it for their daily work.

Since I love to inspire others with the potential I feel myself, I asked the next week, when we were in a meeting together again, if they'd be open to learning what AI could do for them. They were! In this instance, they were allowed to use Le Chat and Copilot. I asked: "what does your daily work consist of and what would you like to test?". This person was responsible for writing instructions for their colleagues on ways of working, and he would love to write them more concisely, more energising for the target audience.

Five minutes to see the value

We uploaded one of the existing instructions and he started playing around with it. "Can it also make a summary at the start?" "Go ahead and ask if it can!" Within 5 minutes, he saw the value of using AI in his daily work. I love it when moments like these occur. It always makes me realise how far behind most organisations are when it comes to innovations like these, and how complex their context is for something as simple as giving access to AI.

The number one pain point

My next epiphany of how far we still have to go was when I was working on a pilot to test my tiny habits approach and apply it to AI adoption. One of my heartfelt steps in the process was not to start by making generic prompt tips available, but to first collect the actual pain points of employees in their daily work. Then we could make the tiny habits super relevant to them.

When we went through the list of their pain points, I was in disbelief. By far, the number one pain point was managing the uncontrollable mailbox. How do I prioritise my emails? This is 2026. How many years have we had to figure out managing mailboxes? No AI needed at all: add some smart rules to your email box and life gets a lot easier.

The second most mentioned pain point was around meetings. How can we take notes, how can I be better prepared, and how can we better follow up the to-dos from our meetings. Again, we are living in 2026. I fully understand why in a recent McKinsey study on AI, 80% of employees reported productivity gains from AI while most companies don't see any financial impact. If most employees are still stuck in managing mailboxes, prioritising their work and going to, often, very unproductive and not energising meetings, then there is still so much waste removal needed first, before we get to the real, purposeful, value adding work.

The unsexy application

The problem I see here is not that we need to remove this waste first. The problem is that this is a very unsexy application of technology, and not even AI is needed for it. While most leaders are living in FOMO and need to show off the most sexy applications of AI, even if there is proof that it is not giving any measurable ROI.

So, dear leaders

So dear leaders, please focus your technology and AI potential first on removing the huge inefficiencies that are still present in your organisations. That will free up so much time and energy for employees, which can be redirected into improving your services and products and adding more purpose-driven value to your customers, and to society if you are working in government.