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Inc. MagazineApplied AI2026-04-01

The Real Reason Most AI Strategies Fail (And It's Not the Technology)

Companies spend millions on AI tools and see almost no ROI. The bottleneck isn't the model — it's the strategy. The organizations winning with AI share one habit: they treat it as a decision-making upgrade, not a cost-cutting tool.

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NewsletterGrowth Strategy2026-03-03

The Campfire Is Running Your Business

Why most organizations still make decisions around the campfire — oral-culture thinking at machine speed. The villain behind Strategic Urgency.

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NewsletterGrowth Strategy2026-01-21

The Year of the Great Fracture: What I'm Seeing for 2026

Every December, trend reports flood your inbox. By February, you've forgotten what you read. The problem isn't the predictions — it's that no one teaches you what to do with them.

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NewsletterApplied AI2025-10-13

Intelligence Amplified

What it actually means to work with AI — not as a tool you use occasionally, but as a system woven into how you think, create, and decide.

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Inc. Magazine2026-04-01

The Real Reason Most AI Strategies Fail (And It's Not the Technology)

Companies spend millions on AI tools and see almost no ROI. The bottleneck isn't the model — it's the strategy. The organizations winning with AI share one habit: they treat it as a decision-making upgrade, not a cost-cutting tool.

Newsletter2026-04-01

What the Best Leaders Do When Everyone Is Frozen

Uncertainty is the new normal. The question isn't how to make it stop — it's how to build an organization that moves decisively through it. Three patterns from leaders who get it right when others default to "wait and see."

Newsletter2026-03-03

The Campfire Is Running Your Business

Why most organizations still make decisions around the campfire — oral-culture thinking at machine speed. The villain behind Strategic Urgency.

Newsletter2026-01-21

The Year of the Great Fracture: What I'm Seeing for 2026

Every December, trend reports flood your inbox. By February, you've forgotten what you read. The problem isn't the predictions — it's that no one teaches you what to do with them.

Newsletter2025-11-25

The Incumbent's Dilemma

Why the companies most capable of leading the next era are often the last ones to. The paradox of success as a strategic liability.

Newsletter2025-11-06

Why the X Matters More Than Ever

When AI commoditizes optimization, meaning becomes the moat. The argument for investing in experience in a world where everything else can be automated.

Newsletter2025-10-13

Intelligence Amplified

What it actually means to work with AI — not as a tool you use occasionally, but as a system woven into how you think, create, and decide.

Newsletter2025-06-24

Unicorns and Horses

The obsession with unicorn outcomes is making leaders miss the horses that would actually build durable businesses.

Newsletter2025-07-20

The Librarian's Paradox

The more information we have access to, the less we actually know. Why AI is making the curation problem worse — and what to do about it.

Inc. Magazine2026-02-07

Innovation: Your Customers' Headache Is Your Competitive Edge

Most founders chase the next big thing while ignoring the 60-second headaches that quietly define their customers' lives.

Inc. Magazine2025-11-20

The Anti-Venture Capital Playbook: How to Build a Brand Without Losing Your Soul

What three decades of bootstrapping teach about building brands that last — without handing your soul to investors.

Inc. Magazine2025-04-11

AI's 'Theranos Moment'? What the 11x Scandal Reveals About Credibility

Another day, another high-growth AI startup under fire. What the 11x scandal reveals about the credibility crisis building in the AI industry.

Inc. Magazine2024-05-09

The Future of Retail: 4 New Rules for DTC Brand Success

Generative AI and dark social are disrupting the marketing landscape everywhere. Here's what that means for direct-to-consumer retail.

Inc. Magazine2023-10-03

Influencer Marketing Is Out. Creator Marketing Is In.

The shift from influence to trust. Why brands that build with creators (not through them) are winning the next decade.

Inc. Magazine2023-06-01

3 Industries That Will Be Forever Changed by ChatGPT

For many executives, ChatGPT felt like a shiny new tool. Shama saw something different: a permanent shift in three industries that would never look the same.

LinkedIn2025-12-10

Dollar Tree's New Customers Make Over $100K. Here's What That Really Means.

60% of Dollar Tree's new customers earn over $100K a year. This isn't an inflation story. It's a psychological shift in consumer behavior that breaks traditional segmentation models.

LinkedIn2025-12-04

Slack's CEO Left for OpenAI. Here's the Signal Everyone Missed.

The migration from public feeds to private channels to intelligent interfaces. Human behavior has already shifted. The gap between how humans behave and how businesses think they behave is widening.

LinkedIn2025-12-08

Omnicom Retired FCB, DDB, and MullenLowe. 152 Years of History Erased.

The barbell effect is accelerating. The big get bigger. The specialized survive. The middle gets crushed. This pattern hit retail first. Now it's coming for professional services.

LinkedIn2026-03-13

I Am Not Teaching My Kids to Code

The tools will change a hundred times before my kids are grown. What won't change is how they see themselves. Five identity-first things I tell my kids instead of pushing them into coding bootcamps.

LinkedIn2025-12-24

Parenting Is Basically Improv with Better Props Now

This holiday season, get weird with AI. It's not just for spreadsheets.

LinkedIn2026-02-05

The Multiplier Gap: 80% of Professionals Feel Unprepared for 2026

Gen Z isn't just behind on AI. They're being asked to build a career inside the disruption itself. The distance between mediocre and excellent, amplified by AI, has never been wider.

LinkedIn2025-12-12

Answer Share Will Be Your Most Critical KPI

If AI systems determine what people read, trust, and buy, every brand has two mandates: become the answer where you're invisible, and protect where you're already the answer.

LinkedIn2026-02-12

Something Big Is Happening (Leader's Edition)

While people figure out ChatGPT, entire organizational structures are being rewritten underneath them. The Three Collapses and what leaders should actually do about them.

LinkedIn2025-11-20

The Timothée Chalamet Zoom Call Through the Strategic Urgency Lens

See the signal. Interpret it through six questions. Act while the window is open. How A24 spotted the moment and moved before it closed.

LinkedIn2026-02-11

The Soft Layoff: How PwC and Google Are Getting Creative

Both companies know AI means fewer people. But mass layoffs look bad. So PwC lets geography do the cutting. Google lets culture do the cutting. Same move: you choose to leave.

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