AI is a forcing function, not a feature

We’re in the noisiest phase of AI right now - bold claims, hot takes, ‘AI just killed X industry’ posts everywhere. Unapologetic, audacious claims.

But AI hasn’t killed anything. What it’s done is lower the barrier to entry and increase the rate of change. That’s not destruction, it’s redistribution and it’s creating a dangerous distraction. Because while everyone’s arguing about whether AI is revolutionary or overhyped, the real work is being ignored. That work isn’t sexy. It’s not model releases or product demos. It’s operational redesign.

Right now, most companies are treating AI like an add-on. Another layer in an already bloated stack, another initiative, another squad. And that’s exactly why they’re struggling. Because AI isn’t a feature, it’s a forcing function.

It forces you to ask better questions - Why do we work like this? Why do we pay for tools we barely use? Why are processes so fragmented? When you follow those questions properly, you don’t end up with ‘AI adoption.’ You end up with a fundamentally different business. One where workflows are rebuilt, not patched, tooling is rationalised, not expanded and people understand both the why and the how.

That’s where the real value sits. But it requires something most organisations are uncomfortable with - change at a structural level. Instead, they default to safer moves -  launching AI squads, publishing playbooks and announcing they’re ‘AI-first’. It looks good. It sounds good. It doesn’t actually do much.

Meanwhile, a different kind of company is emerging. Quieter, more focused. They’re not talking about AI constantly. They’re using it to rebuild cost structures, create custom workflows and move faster with fewer dependencies. They’re questioning everything.

And that’s the real shift. Because the biggest impact of AI won’t be who uses it. It’ll be who uses it to rethink how their business fundamentally operates. The hype will fade, the noise will settle. And when it does, the gap between the companies that talked about AI and the ones that rebuilt around it will be painfully obvious.