My AI strategy has nothing to do with productivity
Every other firm is chasing cuts. Here's the game I'm playing instead.
I’m home this week.
Full week back in the office. No stages, no airports, no handshakes in hotel lobbies. Just me, the quiet of my Florida office, and a blank canvas.
I’m spending the week building AI agents to transform every part of our company. Not automating old tasks. Building new capabilities. It’s one of those weeks where the work is the thinking.
Which brings me to something I keep running into.
Every conversation I have these days about AI lands in the same place.
“What are you using it for?”
And almost every answer is some version of the same thing: doing existing work faster, cheaper, with fewer people. Cutting the cost of content creation. Reducing research time. Shrinking the number of steps in a process.
All of that is fine. None of it is the game.
Here’s the problem with building your AI strategy around productivity.
Productivity means reducing the cost of output. That’s a bounded gain.
You can only reduce cost to zero.
You cannot go below zero.
That’s The Productivity Ceiling.
And everyone racing to cut costs with AI will hit it at the same time. When they do, you will have gained nothing structural. You will have optimized yourself to the same level as everyone else who optimized.
The firms that figure this out will be playing a completely different game.
The question I’m asking is different.
Not “how do I do this cheaper?”
“What can I now do that I couldn’t do before?”
That question has no ceiling.
I’ll give you three examples from the past few weeks.
We launched a new website. Fully built and optimized for both traditional search and AI-driven discovery.
We didn’t hire an SEO agency.
We didn’t replace anyone.
We added a channel we weren’t going to buy.
New capability. Not lower cost.
One of my clients built internal software. AI-powered analysis that was cost-prohibitive before. He can now do a level of due diligence on every deal that his competitors can’t match.
That analysis became a new service offering.
The new offering attracted new clients.
One AI tool turned into a product line.
Another client is in healthcare. He’s using private LLMs to analyze data on Parkinson’s treatments.
The data existed before.
The connections between it did not.
He is creating new value (treatments) from data that was always there but couldn’t be fully understood. That new value will be worth a great deal to patients… and the practice is growing fast as a result.
In every case, the pattern is the same.
New value is being created.
Not existing value delivered cheaper.
This matters a lot when you zoom out.
Twelve to eighteen months from now, the firms using AI for growth will have a structural competitive advantage. Not because they use AI. Because the value they deliver is better. AI is the enabler. The better value is what people pay for.
Tesla is the clearest example at scale.
Tesla is not a car company that adopted AI.
Tesla is an AI company that makes cars.
When electric vehicles started getting traction, every major automaker built one. They approached it as a new powertrain for an existing product.
Tesla built something different. They built an AI vehicle that happens to run on electricity.
The result is a driving experience that the others couldn’t replicate.
We bought one last year for my wife.
I was not an EV person.
I had no interest in an electric vehicle.
We bought it because the driving experience is extraordinary. On a long drive, I can engage full self-drive. I can drink a cup of coffee. I arrive after five hours refreshed in a way that never happens when I’m the one driving.
I know some of you are skeptics. Once you try it, you’ll understand.
Tesla’s market cap is 10 times the combined valuation of all other U.S. automakers.
Not because they use AI.
Because they used AI to deliver a driving experience that is, for many people, a dream come true.
The other companies built efficient electric vehicles.
Tesla gave people something they didn’t know they wanted until they had it.
AI is the enabler.
What people want is the result.
The firms that understand this are asking a different question than everyone else chasing the productivity ceiling.
They’re asking: how do I use AI to give my clients a dream come true experience?
Your answer to that question will have no ceiling.
The firms still asking “how do I cut costs?” are playing a game with a zero lower bound.
Which question are you asking?
Steve “making dreams come true” Gordon
P.S. Most firms have the raw material for a dream come true offer. They just haven’t asked the question yet. Start there.
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June 2-4 - Strategic Coach CoachCON 26, Orlando
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