The 2026 Playbook for Managing AI Operations

And why I paid for the Pro version of Gamma.app

I’ve been posting a little on this topic on LinkedIn and Substack recently because I think it’s such an important story heading into 2026.

In so many companies, leaders and managers already have too much on their plates and they’re going to be adding on to that full plate by learning a new skillset quickly in 2026.

AI leadership in 2026 will look very operational.

I’ve been talking with a few companies about the concern for how managers and business leaders will adapt to the role of managing AI operations. No joke - there is real concern that this will cause some upheaval in the management ranks.

Day to day, here’s what I’m recommending business leaders plan for. If you’re an individual contributor in your company, you should expect this of your management.

1️⃣ Meeting Focus

They should start meetings by asking where AI saved time or money last week. Not which tool someone tested but which process was improved.

AI needs to be an ongoing agenda item. Teams need to learn from each other and teach each other what has gone right…..and what has gone wrong (this is important).

2️⃣ Clarity Before Automation

They need to force clarity before automation. If a workflow or process is messy or not documented properly, AI doesn’t touch it yet. This is SO important. A messy workflow is an AI rabbit hole that is tough to dig out of.

Managers should be using the AI discussion to figure out which processes need work. The fix is not AI in this case and should go through a different improvement process.

3️⃣ Redesigning of Work

Companies will expect managers to redesign work, not just approve tools. AI isn’t an IT project anymore but rather a management skill increasing in importance.

Managers will need to understand how these AI tools impact work. The days of “trying for fun” are over and the expectation will be that a team’s work is redesigned by the opportunities AI presents.

4️⃣ Policy First

Managers will be expected to know and understand the company’s AI Policy (and they better have one!). All group AI work will need to align with that policy. This is an important one! No “just try it” anymore unless it falls within the policy. Too many security risks otherwise.

This shouldn’t be managing a “no you can’t” AI policy. The policy should give managers the guardrails to work within. Give them the freedom to explore within those guardrails and the freedom to let their teams experiment.

5️⃣ Measure Adoption

They’ll need to measure AI adoption like any other system. How is AI used? What are the outcomes? How can we start adopting an AI ROI strategy?

Companies need to expect this of their managers. The AI tidal wave isn’t going to slow down so starting to measure usage and impact now will only help the group and company overall moving forward.

Managers should be thinking about setting AI usage goals and tracking progress towards those goals like they do any other metric. And the metrics don’t need to be overly complex right now!

6️⃣ Normalize Experimentation

This is my favorite. Leaders will need to normalize experimentation without chaos.

I repeat…”without chaos”.

Stay within guardrails but give the freedom to test and explore. There is no cookie cutter AI implementation and companies need to stop waiting for that.

AI adoption and implementation will come from experimentation. Those experiments will snowball into concrete AI implementations.

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AI is moving past the grand gestures of promising slide decks and into operation now. The managers who stick out and grow in this season are the ones that follow the playbook above.

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Connect with me!

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Gamma.app

As you know, I test out and try a variety of AI tools and resources so I can share my findings in this newsletter. But not all I test make it into my actual business workflows.

Until I met Gamma.

For those not familiar, Gamma became popular as an AI slide deck creator. But I’ve learned it’s so much more. It’s more of a thinking partner that also produces very well put-together content and visuals.

Here are some use cases that jumped out as I was testing it.

1. Executive briefings & internal updates

If you’re regularly sharing:

• Strategy updates

• Initiative overviews

• Leadership readouts

• Board-level summaries

Gamma is excellent at turning messy thoughts into clear, scannable narratives. It forces structure without slowing you down.

2. Early-stage thinking & idea development

This is an underrated use case.

Gamma is great when:

• You don’t fully know what you think yet

• You need to explore an idea before “locking” it into slides

• You want to pressure-test logic and flow

I think of it as thinking in public, but with guardrails.

3. Client-facing explainers

For consultants, marketers, and operators, Gamma works well for:

• Explaining a framework

• Walking through a process

• Sharing a recommendation or roadmap

It’s especially useful when the goal is understanding, not polish.

4. Social media content

Gamma can publish content designed and formatted for the platform you want to share it on. Think repurposing blog posts, guide, white papers, manuals into:

• LinkedIn carousels

• Instagram stories or posts

• Really any platform….

There are probably a thousand other use cases but that should get your brains working.

My test involved my text from the first section of this newsletter. It’s a presentation I’ll be giving in the near future so wanted to concept out some slides for a deck.

I chose to create with AI and went with the Paste in Text option.

Then selected presentation and pasted in my content.

There is then an option to choose what you want Gamma to do with the content you pasted. I went with the first option since my content was more of an outline.

Below are some of the next options you have that configure your prompt. I had earlier put together a theme that follows my brand colors and style so that was here to select.

Additionally, I can add more context around the audience and the intended tone. Overall, plenty of options to hone in on what you want.

The interface also give you the ability to change the “card” breaks. In this example, think of cards as the slides. AI automatically selects what it thinks the cards should be but you can change if you need to.

I’ll let the result speak for itself. Click HERE or the image below to see the deck it created. Note….I have not made one edit to this. I wanted to preserve what you get on a first pass.

You can compare to what I wrote in the first section as well. I think it’s a fantastic representation of what I was conveying.

Yes, I will make edits before using but it helped me shape my ideas into a visual format which saved me at least two hours.

One final note. The editing options are phenomenal. You can edit every single piece of each slide with better functionality than you’d get in PPT or Google Slides.

Then, you can simply export this to either of those presentation platforms and still be able to edit anything.

Yes, I absolutely went ahead an paid for the Pro version. No brainer for me and what my needs are.

Click the image to view the full deck:

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Is there someone on your team or in your company you think could benefit from reading this newsletter?

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