For many small business owners, ChatGPT has quietly become the most consulted “employee” in the company. It writes sales emails, produces social media posts, drafts proposals, suggests pricing, builds job descriptions, outlines strategies, and even attempts to forecast growth. For some, it feels like having an all-in-one operations director sitting inside a browser tab.
And yet, many of the same businesses using it for everything still struggle to generate consistent leads, convert customers, or scale sustainably. The frustration is growing. The technology is powerful, so why does growth still feel so fragile?
The answer is simple but uncomfortable. ChatGPT is not a COO; it is not a strategist, and it’s not a commercial leader. It is a multi-purpose AI tool, and using it like a replacement for expertise is one of the fastest ways for a business to stall.
What ChatGPT Is Actually Designed to Do
At its core, ChatGPT is a large language model. It predicts the next most likely word based on patterns in vast amounts of data. That makes it exceptionally good at generating text, summarising information, rewording ideas, brainstorming concepts, and answering general questions.
It does not understand your commercial pressures or see your margins tightening. It does not feel the consequences of poor positioning, weak systems, or misaligned teams. It cannot see how marketing, sales, operations, and finance interlock inside your specific business.
When used properly, it can support each of those areas. When used as a substitute for them, it creates the illusion of progress without the infrastructure to sustain it.
Why Businesses Feel Busy but Do Not Feel Bigger
One of the most common patterns emerging now is output without traction. Businesses are producing more content than ever before. They are sending more emails, posting more frequently, and launching more campaigns. On paper, they are more active than they have ever been.
But activity is not the same as growth.
If your offer is unclear, AI will reproduce that confusion at scale. If your sales process is inconsistent, AI will automate the inconsistency. If your customer data is fragmented, AI will amplify fragmented insight. The tool accelerates whatever system it is plugged into, but it does not fix the system itself.
This is why many SMEs feel like they are working harder with better tools and yet seeing little movement in revenue.
Leadership Cannot Be Automated
A COO does not simply execute tasks. A real operations leader balances cash flow, delivery capacity, team performance, risk appetite, customer experience, and long-term resilience. They make trade-offs under pressure. They decide what not to do as much as what to do.
These decisions live in areas that AI does not own: values, responsibility, timing, and human judgment.
When businesses attempt to delegate these responsibilities to automation, they often lose clarity about who is actually steering the company. When a strategy underperforms, it becomes difficult to locate ownership. The logic quietly shifts from “we chose this” to “the system suggested this”.
Growth without ownership rarely survives contact with reality.
The Difference Between Using AI and Being Led by It
There is a critical difference between integrating AI into a business and being led by it. The first requires structure, oversight, and expertise. The second replaces thinking with prompts.
Businesses that use AI well tend to have very clear foundations. They understand their target customer, and they know how their sales engine actually works. They know where data enters the system and how it should be interpreted. Ultimately, AI becomes a layer of optimisation on top of that structure.
Businesses that use AI poorly often hope it will become the structure.
That gap is where most disappointment is born.
Why 24/7 Systems Matter More Than One-Off Tools
Running a business is not a series of isolated tasks; it is an ecosystem of continuously moving parts. Website traffic, lead quality, conversion rate, follow-up speed, customer retention, pricing pressure, delivery costs, payroll timing, and cash flow all influence one another in real time.
Dropping a single AI tool into that ecosystem without supervision is like installing a powerful engine into a vehicle with no dashboard and no driver monitoring it.
Growth systems need to be observed, adjusted, and protected continuously. Data needs interpretation, and automations need refinement. Funnels need testing; markets shift, customers change behaviour, and competitors adapt constantly.
This is why unmanaged AI use so often stalls. The tool works, but the system does not.
Why Expertise Still Separates Progress from Noise
Expertise is not about knowing how to use a tool; it is about knowing where and how it should be applied inside a live commercial environment. It is understanding what should be automated and what must remain human. It is knowing when to trust data and when to challenge it.
This is also where many SMEs quietly struggle. They have access to powerful technology but not the layered expertise required to operate it safely at scale. They are effectively handed the dashboard of a high-performance machine without being trained to fly it.
The result is not just inefficiency, it is risk.
The Question Every Business Should Be Asking Now
The most important question is no longer “should we be using AI?” That stage has passed. The real question is “how responsibly are we relying on it?”
Are your tools being guided by a defined growth strategy or replacing the need for one? Are they being monitored continuously or only checked when something breaks? Are they improving decision-making or quietly weakening accountability?
ChatGPT is not your COO. It never was. It is a multi-purpose AI assistant that can dramatically increase efficiency when plugged into the right system, under the right guidance, with the right oversight.
Growth still depends on leadership, and systems still depend on expertise. Technology is only as effective as the structure surrounding it, and that part cannot be automated.
