#003 - From Noise to North Star.
Forty-four percent of C-suite executives say they'd override a decision they'd already planned to make if AI suggested otherwise (SAP research, 2025).
I'm not ready to hand strategy to a model—and you shouldn't be either. I also wouldn't outsource this to a management consulting firm—you negotiate with partners, then staff it with students.
Don't outsource your judgment.
If your company is even modestly digital, an AI strategy isn't a "nice to have." It's how you protect margins this year and earn the right to build new systems over the next few. The hardest part is the first phase—Imagining your company in the future. Here, thinking quality matters most. That requires igniting calm and courage at the same time. Strategy isn't a race to the cleverest tool. It's a test of attention, composure, and the questions you're willing to ask when the room gets loud. Slow the tempo and you'll notice first-order truths and second-order effects. Stay calm, and you'll resist the urge to make binary choices. Show courage and you'll stop hedging and start choosing. The result is clarity you can scale. Calm plus courage equals clarity.
Imagine Week
In my AI Strategy Framework, I've developed a repeatable approach to achieve that clarity—the Imagine phase, or simply the Imagine Week. It's a focused, five- to seven-day, off-grid leadership retreat designed to clear noise, align the board, and set a direction you can actually execute. Radical, or just overdue?
The 5–7 Day Reset
So how do you run an Imagine Week that earns absolute clarity? You take your team somewhere special, with fewer distractions and more daylight for thinking (my place is a hotel in the jungle). Mornings begin with a walk—yes, literally—while the mind is fresh and phones stay locked away. Late morning, you trade the forest path for a whiteboard and translate what's changing in technology into pressures your market will actually feel. After lunch, you look inward and decide what must remain a core strength—and what should change when AI is native to your workflows and products. By late afternoon, energy tilts toward sketching: quick drawings and rough narratives that make ideas tangible, not slide-friendly. Evenings are for synthesis by the fireplace: which ideas survive daylight, which deserve a bolder rewrite, and what story you'd confidently tell your board tomorrow.
No theater, no heroics.
Just a team that leaves with a shared future and the language to defend it.
Your move.
👉 Read Building AI Strategy Part 1: The Week Your Executive Team Time-Travels.
