Strategy & AI: 4 questions to prep for 2030

Nobody has AI fig­ured out. Not even the peo­ple who under­stand it best.

I recent­ly sat in on a ses­sion with Peter Dia­man­dis, Steven Kotler, and Ray Kurzweil, three of the sharpest minds track­ing this stuff. Dia­man­dis and Kotler open­ly dis­agreed with each oth­er. On stage. In real time.

That told me every­thing I need­ed to know. If they haven’t fig­ured it out, no one has.

It reminds me of the ear­ly days of rail­ways, or elec­tric­i­ty. Lots of debate. Lots of pas­sion­ate opin­ions. No way to see around the cor­ner. We’re in that same moment with AI, and robot­ics is right behind it.

Here’s the good news: you’re already a change expert. You don’t need to pre­dict AI cor­rect­ly, nobody can. What you need is a dis­ci­plined way to test and learn, anchored to the prin­ci­ples that don’t move even when every­thing else does.

Improve­ment main­tains. Growth transforms.

Most of the cur­rent AI con­ver­sa­tion is about effi­cien­cy and cost cut­ting. Fine, but that’s table stakes. Every­one will do it, and it won’t hand you a last­ing edge.

Real com­pet­i­tive advan­tage lives in what we call the Growth Quad­rant, the parts of your busi­ness that let you sell more, not just spend less.

As you head into annu­al plan­ning, here are four ques­tions I’m bring­ing to every client team this quar­ter to align them on the strate­gic val­ue of AI.

We put these four ques­tions, along with the work­sheet to walk your team through them, into a com­pan­ion handout. 

At least half of your bul­lets should be growth relat­ed, not just improve­ment relat­ed, and one of your three-year thrusts should be about AI or robotics.

You’ve nav­i­gat­ed big change before. Most of it looked far more daunt­ing at the start than it turned out to be in hind­sight. AI is big­ger and faster, but the fun­da­men­tals haven’t moved: solve a real prob­lem, for more cus­tomers, bet­ter than any­one else can.

Chal­lenge

Before your next plan­ning ses­sion, sit down with your team and answer these four ques­tions togeth­er. Name your trends one by one instead of treat­ing AI as one giant, unman­age­able idea.

Addi­tion­al Resources

Arti­cles

• Prox­im­i­ty: The Advan­tage in Get­ting Clos­er to the Moment of Demand
• If Not You, Who? The Own­er of Com­pa­ny Courage
• Stop Fund­ing AI Par­ty Tricks

Growth Inter­views & Webinars

• A Strate­gic View on AI for Our Clients
• Inter­view with Strat­e­gy Expert & Best­selling Author, Kai­han Krippendorff

Growth Case Studies

• Action Solar: Foun­da­tion Over Fast Money
• Ashi­ana Hous­ing: Build­ing on Purpose
• The Lit­tle Pota­to Com­pa­ny: Lessons from a Nat­ur­al Entrepreneur

Book: We Are As Gods

• Buy on Amazon

Book: The 4 Forces of Growth 

• 4 minute Overview
• 45 Minute Webinar
• Buy on Amazon

Book: Your Oxy­gen Mast First

• Assess your­self
• Resilience Webi­nar

Book: Scal­ing Up

• 45 Minute Webinar
• Arti­cle: 10 Years After Scal­ing Up: What I’ve Learned About Growth