You've thought about AI. You've had the conversations. Here's what to do next.
In our last post, we wrote about right-sizing AI — how to diagnose where your organization actually stands and find a starting point that matches your real capacity. If you haven't read it, that's the place to begin.
This post is about what comes next. Because figuring out where you are is only useful if it leads somewhere. And for most associations, the next move isn't a tool — it's a conversation, and then a few practical things your team can actually hold onto.
Whether you're heading to ASAE's AI in Action Demo Day on June 24th, evaluating a specific tool, or simply trying to get your team on the same page about AI, this is your starting kit.
The technology is rarely the hard part. It's the conversations that are hard. Many AI initiatives stall not because the tool failed but because the organization hadn't aligned on expectations before they started.
The conversations worth having first
Before you look at a single tool, there are a few things you should get clear on internally. It's not a formal strategy session. It's just honest answers to honest questions.
Start with what's costing you time or money right now. Where are people doing work that doesn't require their judgment? What processes are repetitive, slow, or manual? Those are your best first candidates for AI — not your most ambitious use cases, but the ones where a clear win is within reach and the stakes of getting it wrong are manageable.
Then name what's off-limits. Not a vague 'be careful,' but specific categories your team can actually remember — and the reason behind each one. When people understand why something is off-limits, they can make good calls on the gray areas that never make it onto any list. If you wouldn't post it publicly, it doesn't go into a non-licensed AI tool. That's the rule of thumb worth sharing.
Finally, pay attention to how your team responds to AI conversations. If someone is confused by what they're seeing in a demo, it's not a knowledge gap. It's a signal. If you can't explain what problem a tool would solve in your own words, it's not your tool yet.
Excitement is fuel, not a strategy. Ground it in a real problem and it becomes something you can actually build on.
Your AI readiness toolkit
We've put together a set of resources you can use right now. Share them with your team, use them to start a conversation, or keep them nearby as you explore what AI means for your organization. Each one builds on the last.
1. Six Questions for AI Use
A one-page thinking tool for your team. Before using AI for any task, these six questions help build the judgment that makes good decisions stick — not just in the cases you recognize, but in the gray areas too.
2. Ellipsis Partners AI Use Principles
A plain-language document your team can discuss, adapt, and put to use. Covers what AI can be used for, what information to protect, and how to review AI-generated content before it goes anywhere. A starting point for shared expectations, not a finished policy.
→ Download the AI Use Principles
3. Guardrails, Questions, and Healthy Skepticism
For when you're ready to evaluate tools — whether at Demo Day or anywhere else. Covers what information should never go into an AI tool and why, ten questions to ask any AI vendor, and a clear breakdown of AI-first versus AI-infused products and the different risks each carries.
→ Download Guardrails, Questions, and Healthy Skepticism
4. The AI Pilot Guide
Dr. Cathy Lada of Lada Consulting has put together a practical guide to help associations move from AI-curious to AI-capable. A natural companion to everything above.
After any AI exploration — including Demo Day
Whether you're coming out of ASAE's AI in Action Demo Day or any other AI exploration, the goal was never to leave with a decision. It was to leave with clarity about your next step.
Here's what that looks like in practice:
- Write down two or three specific pain points or capacity gaps before you walk into any demo. That list becomes your evaluation lens. Without it, every tool looks like a fit.
- Notice what isn't there. What problems didn't get solved? What categories of AI weren't represented? The gaps in the landscape tell you as much as what was shown.
- Narrow to one or two things that genuinely resonated and actually match what you identified in your self-assessment. It's not the most impressive demo. It's the most relevant one.
- Schedule one conversation with your team — even just 15 minutes — before you act on anything you saw. Now at least two of you are asking the same questions.
- Give yourself permission to not have it figured out yet. If you leave inspired by the demos, have a short list of follow-ups, and a clearer sense of what you need to work out internally — that's a success.
You don't need to leave with a contract. You need to leave with better questions than you came in with.
Not sure where your organization stands with AI?
Start with our Right-Sized AI post — a practical framework with four questions that help you diagnose your starting point.
And when you're ready for a guided first step, our AI Sprint Series is built for exactly where you are.
→ Contact us to learn more about the AI Sprint Series
