I mentioned BlackBerry to one of my children the other day. The perplexed look on his face made me feel ancient. He definitely thought I was talking about the fruit.

It also made me think about how promising businesses and products are not always enough to survive technological disruption. BlackBerry was great in the early days of smartphones, but it didn’t adapt quickly enough to the emerging platform-centric ecosystem.

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are the latest disruption in how we work. Simply using them—or giving employees the green light to use them—isn’t enough. If they are not used strategically, companies risk being left behind and losing their competitive advantage.

“The breakthrough of [LLMs] is an invention. The harder challenge is innovation: turning that invention into products, services, and business models that create value for customers and allow firms to capture a meaningful share of that value themselves,” writes Wharton professor Rahul Kapoor.

Here are some ways your company might be misusing or failing to capitalize on ChatGPT’s capabilities—and how to correct course.

You’re Silent On Standard Practices

ChatGPT has arrived at the workplace, whether employers acknowledge it or not. Over a quarter of U.S. workers, and 45% of those with postgraduate degrees, report using ChatGPT for work, according to OpenAI . Bear in mind, that’s reported usage.

Leaders are tasked with clearly communicating company-wide standards and practices. This includes defining the types of tasks that are fit for ChatGPT (think: rote, manual work that saps time and energy but does not require real creativity) versus those that remain squarely in the human domain.

Why does this matter? Because employees can—and should—offload repetitive tasks that do not truly teach them anything, create value, or generate meaning. That creates more time and mental energy for the work that does matter: learning, strategizing, and developing innovative solutions. Committing to one enables the other.

Leaders can provide clear, simple ground rules so employees are not left wondering whether to delegate to ChatGPT, and to avoid needlessly spending time on tasks that do not enrich their work lives.

You’re Not Rethinking Workflows

When it comes to how professionals use ChatGPT, certain trends have emerged. People use it largely for tasks like research, writing, coding, and media generation, according to OpenAI . I’ve noticed that many people use it ad hoc —when it seems useful—rather than systematically. To me, that’s a missed opportunity to truly improve how a company operates.

Instead, teams can integrate ChatGPT directly into core parts of their workflows. Rather than manually prompting it— research this, code that —the model can operate as part of a system where tasks are triggered and executed automatically. This is where agents make things more practical.

For example, imagine a user ticket comes in. That event can trigger an agent, which considers your company’s data and context, decides which steps to take, and retrieves relevant information. It then taps ChatGPT with that context to generate a response or recommendation. Finally, the agent executes the outcome—drafting a reply, routing the issue, or updating a system—while employees focus on more complex problems.

This requires a shift to systems thinking: seeing each task as part of a broader workflow and identifying where ChatGPT can consistently and reliably improve a step.

You’re Shortchanging Your Competitive Advantage

I’m an advocate for AI and automation. Not because it can replace human effort, but because it can take over the tedious, frustrating parts of our jobs, and leave us with more time and space for things that excite and engage us.

To date, many companies have been integrating ChatGPT in a bottom-up manner. OpenAI calls it a “grassroots pattern.” Essentially, employees start tooling around with the LLM and use it where it speeds up a task. The companies extracting the most value from ChatGPT, however, insist on top-down approach, so that everyone is on the same page and use is strategic.

Before any organization begins top-down incorporating LLMs like ChatGPT, it’s essential to step back and identify your competitive advantage. What is the thing that makes your company stand out from its competitors? Keep this in mind when you start automating your workflows and protect it religiously. That’s where you want to devote employee time, empathy, and creativity—the things that no LLM can replace.

For example, at Jotform, we pride ourselves on the relationships we’ve built with users over the years. We automate parts of the feedback process using our own forms, but we make sure users can still communicate with us directly when needed. We’re committed to protecting that human touch when clients need it most—moments when they’re on deadline or under stress, or when the event is one week out and the ticketing website is malfunctioning. Those are the experiences that turn happy customers into loyal users .

If you automate your strengths, you shortchange your competitive advantage. Instead, take the time to spell them out and use ChatGPT to reliably automate around them.

One final reminder: allow your teams to build slack into their schedules to methodically experiment and improve workflows with ChatGPT. If that time investment feels like too much to ask, consider whether you want to be part of tomorrow’s ecosystem—or get left behind as it evolves.