It’s here. And it’s already going viral. Our newest 70-page playbook answers the question everyone’s asking: How do you actually become an AI-first company, not just run another pilot? A practical guide for leaders who are done with pilots and ready for transformation. Inside the playbook: 👉 Why the traditional AI playbook is a trap and what to do instead 👉 Practical accelerators: tools and frameworks to move from idea to execution 👉 Core operating model shifts to scale AI across the enterprise 👉 Real-world case studies from teams that are already making it work Want the full PDF? Comment PLAYBOOK below and we'll send it over.
Interesting read, but several claims in this AI Playbook don’t hold up when examined against evidence and established research. Treating AI as a “new operating system” assumes linear controllability — a mechanistic framing that ignores socio-technical co-evolution. Complex adaptive systems don’t accept replacement architectures; they evolve through constraint management and feedback. The “90-day transformation” narrative is another rollout fallacy. Large-scale organisational change cannot be time-boxed; it requires iterative probes, evidence-based evaluation, and safe-to-fail experimentation. Claims that “size doesn’t matter” or that off-the-shelf agents “level the field” are inconsistent with current compute economics, data asymmetries, and regulatory structures such as the EU AI Act, which impose heavier burdens on smaller actors. Finally, framing “mindset” as the main barrier overlooks empirical blockers like data quality, integration, and model evaluation. AI scaling is fundamentally infrastructural and systemic, not motivational. Ambitious framing, but the evidence base, time assumptions, and treatment of complexity need substantial reinforcement.
The first element should be an AI audit of all tasks where the junior and middle level staff can freely talk about their daily work schedule and what eats their time. Then map that, desired outcomes, existing tech stack, add AI based enablement along with training. That way everyone in the organisation will feel included in this transformation.
Playbook please. Agree we can in some instances have a 1Bn company with less employees who are orchestrators of the AI Agents. Gamma is an excellent case study of the power of the possible. However as my father would say it depends. If complex products, fulfillment or sales cycles more humans will be needed to succeed. However they too will be relying heavily on their digital assistants.
Thanks Laura Stevens PhD! I love the central idea that radical mindset shift is pre-requisite. This transformation is truly about reinventing organizations, therefore reinventing the identities of the people who make those organizations exist, in order to start operating in completely different ways
If you're AI First, you are not Customer First. If you believe this is the future, then you care less about human first. And AI is not autonomous, where people today, and most organizations already are. An example of another organization that cares more about the hype than reality.
The true worth of AI is not in copying what we already do. It is in letting us do what we never could. That takes a shift in thinking. And those never come easy. But the payoff is worth the pain Thank you for the great work. We need more of that.
Very interesting Laura! Playbook. P.S: what about giving it to Notebook LM and turning in into a podcast? In this way would probably be easier to digest 70 pages of insightful content
Fantastic initiative, Laura — this direction is exactly what leaders need right now. The transition to becoming truly AI-first isn’t about scaling pilots; it’s about redesigning the enterprise architecture for adaptability, intelligence, and continuous learning. In my own work and in Exponential by Design, I’ve seen that the real inflection point comes when organizations move from “AI projects” to AI-native systems — where intelligence becomes embedded in the operating fabric itself. Excited to read your playbook and see how it advances this conversation.
100% agree Laura, True AI transformation is about reinventing the enterprise around a new AI-led operating model. It’s business transformation much more than technology adoption. As much as it’s seemingly attractive to focus on makking the existing people-based process more efficient (as it’s relatively easy) it will not move anyone forward at all on their strategic path.
I look forward to reading this and I understand as a consultancy, commercially, why you would want to go down the route of basically complete internal reinvention, but it isn’t the right thing for most customers. The world is not ready for AI (sadly)