# Companies must remake their processes for AI

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/companies-must-remake-their-processes-for-ai/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Michael Dell](https://realalpha.app/builders/michael-dell/) · Michael Dell is founder, chairman, and CEO of Dell Technologies. · Founded Dell Technologies and committed $6.25 billion to investment accounts for 25 million American children.
- Host: [David Senra](https://realalpha.app/people/david-senra/) · Host, Founders · Has read an entrepreneur's biography every week for Founders since 2016.
- Show: Founders
- Episode: [Michael Dell, Dell Technologies | David Senra](https://realalpha.app/v/9WSsLSq40Yw/), Oct 12, 2025
- Moment: 29:52 to 32:51 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/companies-must-remake-their-processes-for-ai/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/9WSsLSq40Yw/?t=1792

## Quote

> “We need to **totally reset how we're thinking** about the business and reimagine it, reframe it, and understand what the processes are going to look like in five years.”
> — [Michael Dell](https://realalpha.app/builders/michael-dell/) at [30:47](https://realalpha.app/v/9WSsLSq40Yw/?t=1847) · Founders

## Takeaways

1. Use AI to rethink processes, not just add a new tool.
2. Legacy habits can leave a company vulnerable to faster entrants.
3. Treat organizational change as the central challenge.

## About this segment

Michael Dell saw AI as a reason to redesign core processes before new competitors did it for them. The hard part, he says, is organizing people to change how they work.

From “Michael Dell, Dell Technologies | David Senra”, Oct 12, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/9WSsLSq40Yw/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[29:58](https://realalpha.app/v/9WSsLSq40Yw/?t=1798) So, you know, when ChatGPT came out in November of 22, or so looking at this and going, wow, this is a big deal. This is pretty interesting. And you started to see the rate of improvement in the LLMs. And, you know, in technology, you can sort of look at the rate of improvement and the learning curve, and you can sort of plot, well, where's this thing going, right? Where's it going to be in a year or two years or three years?

[30:29](https://realalpha.app/v/9WSsLSq40Yw/?t=1829) And you look at, okay, we're going to have agents and multi-agent systems, and we're going to be able to reason over incredible amounts of information. Well, what does that actually mean for the way knowledge work gets done and the tools that humans are going to have? So you think about that. You go, wow, this is a big, big deal here. We need to totally reset how we're thinking about the business and reimagine it, reframe it, and understand what the processes are going to look like in five years.

[31:06](https://realalpha.app/v/9WSsLSq40Yw/?t=1866) And so you do all that and you say, if we keep doing what we were doing before, we're going to be in serious trouble because some new company is going to come along and, yeah, they're going to have all these new tools. They're not going to have this legacy of crap from the past, right, and old ways of doing things. And they're just going to do it the new way. And so, we have to change or we're going to go out of business.

[31:39](https://realalpha.app/v/9WSsLSq40Yw/?t=1899) You know, I also believe in this idea that if you don't have a crisis, make one, right? You know, you get people excited, motivated, and to drive the necessary change. I mean, in one sense, this is not a technology problem. The technology is there. whether you use it or not. It's a question of how do you organize the team and people to actually go and get this thing done? How do you motivate them? How do you give them the right tools? How do you structure, you know, the ways people work together so that you can do it quickly?

[32:28](https://realalpha.app/v/9WSsLSq40Yw/?t=1948) And it's very hard for people to, you know, if you've been doing something for 10 years or 20 years or 30 years the same way, and all of a sudden it's like some new thing comes along, you're like, no, I don't want to do that. You know, people don't like to change. But you have to. And so that's what we've been doing. Yeah, this is excessively rare.