LBZ Advisory LLC

Your Board Does Not Need Another AI Briefing. It Needs Stop Authority.

Boards spent two years asking whether management understands AI. The harder question is who can interrupt it....

https://liatbenzur.com/2026/08/30/your-board-needs-stop-authority/

Your Board Does Not Need Another AI Briefing. It Needs Stop Authority. Boards spent two years asking if management understands AI. The harder question is who can stop it once it starts acting.

Instinct or Grok Bot? A Working Guide to Choosing an AI Agent

What each one actually does, where each one is stronger, and how to avoid becoming the unpaid manager of your own AI staff...

https://liatbenzur.com/2026/08/29/instinct-or-grok-bot/

Instinct or Grok Bot? A Working Guide to Choosing an AI Agent - LBZ Advisory What each one actually does, where each one is stronger, and how to avoid becoming the unpaid manager of your own AI staff

AI Infrastructure Will Fail Without a Social Contract
A data center may operate for decades, yet the public case for it often rests on temporary construction jobs, projected tax revenue, and promises that cannot be checked. The next phase of America’s artificial intelligence buildout will depend on a stricter bargain: communities must know what a facility will consume, who pays for the added capacity, what remains locally, and what remedy exists when commitments fail.

Read the full essay
https://liatbenzur.com/2026/08/27/ai-infrastructure-social-contract/

AI Infrastructure Will Fail Without a Social Contract - LBZ Advisory Boards, CEOs, and directors should ask who pays for a data center’s grid upgrades, water use, roads, and long-term community obligations before approval.

Klarna's AI handled two-thirds of its customer chats. The company said the work equaled 853 employees.

By late 2025 it was rehiring humans, and quarterly support costs had climbed from $42M to $50M.

The AI was excellent at the repetitive two-thirds and genuinely bad at the rest. Klarna cut headcount before ever drawing that line. Customers holding the harder tickets paid for it.

The same line exists in every support queue. Pattern matching on one side, judgment calls on the other. No vendor will show you where it falls, their pitch depends on you not asking.

The one question worth asking before any support AI pilot: which specific tickets does this resolve well, measured how, and what happens to customers holding the ones it doesn't?

I track deployments like this at getstartedwithai.liatbenzur.com, wins and reversals both, fully sourced. The Klarna story is on the customer support page.

Chipotle's restaurant turnover ran close to 200% a year. Its COO called hiring "one of the most painful processes" managers had to deal with.

Then an AI assistant took over interview scheduling and applicant questions. Time from application to first day dropped from 12 days to 4.

What's worth paying attention to: the time that came back went to restaurant managers, the people whose actual job is running a shift. Not a back-office function with room to absorb admin. The people with the least slack.

Most AI ROI cases count total hours saved. The better question is: whose constraint does this actually remove? A tool that frees up four hours for your most stretched person usually beats one that saves forty hours nobody was waiting on.

The Chipotle story, fully sourced, with the questions to ask any hiring AI vendor: getstartedwithai.liatbenzur.com

Everyone from OpenAI to the University of Helsinki gives away an AI course. Far more than any team has time to sort.

I hand-checked 11 worth taking for leaders and non-technical staff. Grouped by how you learn. Paywalls named. 9 of 11 never ask for money.

Send this to your team instead of another random Slack link:
https://getstartedwithai.liatbenzur.com/training/

How do I get started with AI? Real examples, tools and free courses AI is more than a chat window. See the software and agents real companies use in finance, HR, legal, marketing, product, support, sales and operations — what it changed, and what to ask before you buy.

Klarna's AI handled two-thirds of chats at peak, work they said equaled 853 employees. Support costs still rose. They rehired.

The lesson is blunt: excellent at the repetitive two-thirds, bad at the rest, and headcount got cut before anyone drew that line.

I put failure stories next to the wins on purpose. Functional leaders need both.
https://getstartedwithai.liatbenzur.com/function/support/

AI for Customer Support Deflect repetitive enquiries automatically, equip reps with instant answers, and cut resolution times.

monday.com's inbound was outrunning a ~1,000-person GTM team. A demo request could sit a full day.

Amanda, an AI voice agent that qualifies every inbound lead by phone, cut demo-request response time from 24 hours to under two minutes.

Speed-to-lead shows up in pipeline before the harder, judgment-heavy parts of the funnel do.
https://getstartedwithai.liatbenzur.com/function/sales/

AI for Sales Research prospects instantly, automate post-call admin, and flag deals that are slipping.

HSB processed 1.5M invoices a year. Staff entered every invoice twice because two systems could not talk to each other.

AI coding earned autonomy invoice by invoice (not day-one autopilot). Year one: 60,000+ hours saved, 72% of invoices with no human touch at 96% coding accuracy.

Finance leaders: this is the sequencing story.
https://getstartedwithai.liatbenzur.com/function/finance/

AI for Finance Close the books faster, catch invoice errors before payment, and run real-time cash flow scenarios.

Chipotle cut time-from-application-to-first-day from 12 days to 4 with an AI hiring assistant, mostly by taking scheduling off restaurant managers, not recruiters.

That is the kind of specific, boring win functional leaders actually need.

More function-level AI stories (sourced), failures included:
https://getstartedwithai.liatbenzur.com/function/hr/

AI for HR Source qualified candidates faster, handle routine HR tickets automatically, and free up hours every week.