Series

Strategy in the Age of AI

AI is changing more than how work gets done. It is changing the conditions under which companies compete and win.

Most organizations do not have a strategy problem because they lack ideas, data, planning sessions or initiatives. They have one because they confuse activity with advantage.

They build roadmaps, approve budgets, launch transformation programs and add AI pilots. What they avoid are the harder questions. Where will we compete? How will we win? What must be true for that advantage to hold? What will we choose not to do?

This series treats strategy as a working theory of how an organization wins, and argues that the theory has to be revisited as AI changes five things: customer expectations, industry economics, operating models, competitor capabilities, and how long a moat lasts.

The series
01

A Plan Is Not a Strategy

Your company may have a full roadmap, a funded budget, and dozens of active initiatives. That does not mean it has a strategy.

Customer Expectations · Industry Economics · Operating Models

02

Strategy Begins When You Decide What Not to Do

Every company has more opportunities than it can pursue well. Strategy is the discipline of choosing which opportunities deserve a “no.”

Competitor Capabilities · Durability of the Moat

03

Stop Buying Solutions Before You Name the Problem

When leaders begin with a solution, they often end with an expensive answer to the wrong question.

Operating Models · Customer Expectations

04

Your Strategy Is Not an Executive Offsite Deliverable

Strategy requires leadership choices. It also requires evidence that leadership teams cannot generate from inside the executive conference room.

Operating Models · Competitor Capabilities

05

Consensus Is Not a Strategy

When a strategy is designed to offend no one, it often commits the company to nothing.

Operating Models · Durability of the Moat

06

What Must Be True for This to Work?

Every strategy is a bet. The strongest leaders make the assumptions behind that bet visible before the market exposes them.

Customer Expectations · Industry Economics · Competitor Capabilities

07

Your Operating Model Is Either Supporting Strategy—or Quietly Defeating It

A strategy does not fail only because the market changes. It often fails because the organization was never built to deliver it.

Operating Models · Competitor Capabilities

08

Reassess Your Moat: AI Is Changing the Logic of Advantage

Your company’s moat may still be real. But AI may have lowered the water level around it.

Customer Expectations · Industry Economics · Operating Models · Competitor Capabilities · Durability of the Moat

Explore by strategic impact

AI may change the basis of competition in more than one way at once. These tags point at where to look — and what to question.

Customer Expectations

AI is raising the baseline for speed, personalization, responsiveness, insight and self-service. What customers once found exceptional, they come to expect. Whether AI can improve your service matters less than whether your value proposition stays compelling as that baseline rises.

In this series: A Plan Is Not a Strategy Stop Buying Solutions Before You Name the Problem What Must Be True for This to Work? Reassess Your Moat: AI Is Changing the Logic of Advantage

Industry Economics

AI is cutting the cost of analysis, content, design, software, service delivery and decision-making. When the cost of producing valuable output falls, margins, pricing, market entry and business models move with it. Leaders need to find which of their assumptions about cost, scale and willingness to pay no longer hold.

In this series: A Plan Is Not a Strategy What Must Be True for This to Work? Reassess Your Moat: AI Is Changing the Logic of Advantage

Operating Models

AI changes how work flows, where decisions are made, which roles need human judgment, and how teams coordinate, not just how fast individual tasks get done. Companies that add AI to unchanged processes gain some efficiency. Companies that redesign the operating model can end up in a different competitive position.

In this series: A Plan Is Not a Strategy Stop Buying Solutions Before You Name the Problem Your Strategy Is Not an Executive Offsite Deliverable Consensus Is Not a Strategy Your Operating Model Is Either Supporting Strategy—or Quietly Defeating It Reassess Your Moat: AI Is Changing the Logic of Advantage

Competitor Capabilities

AI gives competitors, especially smaller and faster entrants, capabilities that once took large teams, deep specialist expertise, established infrastructure or years of process maturity. What your competitors can do today is only half of it. The other half is what they will be able to do with products, workflows and cost structures built around AI from the start.

In this series: Strategy Begins When You Decide What Not to Do Your Strategy Is Not an Executive Offsite Deliverable What Must Be True for This to Work? Your Operating Model Is Either Supporting Strategy—or Quietly Defeating It Reassess Your Moat: AI Is Changing the Logic of Advantage

Durability of the Moat

A moat is the reason your advantage persists when competitors try to reproduce it, and it does not stay fixed. AI can weaken moats built on scarce expertise, opaque information, expensive production, complex workflows or operating scale. It can also strengthen advantages rooted in trusted relationships, proprietary data, distinctive processes, distribution and domain judgment, if the company redesigns around them.

In this series: Strategy Begins When You Decide What Not to Do Consensus Is Not a Strategy Reassess Your Moat: AI Is Changing the Logic of Advantage

Readiness Diagnostic

Where does your company actually stand?

Ten questions on whether your position grows more defensible — or more commoditized — as AI diffuses across your market. Fifteen minutes, complimentary.