AI is a gas pedal, NOT a GPS. Most businesses are confusing the two
Let me tell you something I keep seeing, and honestly, it's starting to bother me.
Smart people. Capable people. People who have built real things and know their industries inside out are walking into meetings with stunning decks full of AI roadmaps, automation flows, GenAI pilot programmes, and technology stacks. The whole production. Hours of work, clearly. Real investment of time and thinking.
And then someone in the room asks the obvious question.
"But what problem are we actually trying to solve?"
Silence.
That silence isn't a technology problem.
It's a strategy problem. And no amount of AI is going to fix it. We got distracted by the tool.
I understand why it happened. The last few years have been genuinely overwhelming in terms of what's become possible. The capabilities landed fast, the hype landed even faster, and suddenly every board meeting, every investor conversation, every industry event had the same energy: get an AI strategy or get left behind.
So people got AI strategies.
What fewer people did was step back and ask whether they had a clear business strategy first. Whether they truly understood the problem they existed to solve, who they were solving it for, and why they – specifically – were the right ones to do it.
Those questions are boring compared to a GPT-powered workflow diagram. They're also the only questions that actually matter.
Here's the honest truth about what AI Does
AI is extraordinary. I'll say that plainly, because I think the pushback against AI hype sometimes swings too far – into scepticism for its own sake. The capabilities are real. The potential is real. I've seen it create genuine leverage for businesses that know how to use it.
But here's what AI doesn't do: it doesn't create clarity where there isn't any.
It amplifies what already exists. That's it. That's the whole thing.
If your value proposition is strong and you know exactly who you serve and why they choose you – AI can make that stronger. It can help you reach more people, serve them faster, operate with less friction, and build on the advantages you've already earned.
But if your positioning is fuzzy?
AI will produce more fuzzy content faster than you ever could manually. If your customer experience has cracks in it? An AI chatbot will now disappoint people at a scale that would have been impossible before. If your strategy is unclear, AI will make the confusion louder, more expensive, and a lot harder to walk back from.
It doesn't judge what you give it. It just runs with it.
The three questions nobody wants to sit with
Before anyone on your team opens a single conversation about AI tools or implementation, three questions need honest answers. Not polished answers. Honest ones.
What problem are we actually solving?
Not the elevator pitch version. The real version is specific, grounded in evidence, based on something you've seen and validated rather than assumed.
Who are we solving it for?
And I mean really – not a demographic category or a market segment label. Real people, in real situations, with real frustrations and real alternatives they're currently settling for. Do you know them well enough to describe their week?
Why us, and not someone else?
This is the one that makes people uncomfortable, because it demands a genuine answer. What do you bring – in insight, in access, in relationships, in perspective, in hard-won experience – that makes you the right people for this? If that answer is vague, no AI tool is going to manufacture it for you.
These aren't AI questions. They're strategy questions. And they have to come first.
The difference between winning and spending When I look at the businesses genuinely pulling ahead with AI – not just talking about it, actually using it to grow – the pattern is consistent.
They weren't the first movers. They weren't the biggest spenders. They didn't have the flashiest tech stack.
They were the ones who knew exactly what they were accelerating before they pressed the pedal.
They had done the unglamorous work. They understood their customers deeply. They had a point of view on where they were going and why. And then – from that foundation – they looked at AI and asked, 'Where can this compound that we've already built?'
That's leverage. That's what it looks like when the tool serves the strategy instead of substituting for it.
The businesses spending money without that foundation? They're generating output, sure. Lots of it. Fast. But output without direction isn't progress. It's just an expensive activity.
Getting the order right
I'm not telling you to slow down on AI. I'm telling you to sequence it correctly.
Strategy first. Acceleration, second.
Every AI initiative should trace back to a specific, already-defined need – a customer insight you've validated, a position you've chosen to own, or a direction you've committed to out loud. If you can't draw that line clearly and quickly, the project isn't a solution. It's procrastination in a very convincing disguise.
The businesses that will look back on this period as a genuine turning point are the ones that used AI to become more of what they already knew they were. Not the ones who hoped the technology would figure that out for them. The question that changes everything isn't "How do we use AI?"
It's "Where are we actually going?"
Get that one right first. Everything after it gets easier.
I'm genuinely curious – in your experience, which conversation happens first in practice: the strategy conversation or the AI one? And when the order gets flipped, what does that actually cost? Tell me what you've seen.