'Gradually, then suddenly' - Part 1

Midjourney / Antony Slumbers

This was how Ernest Hemingway described going bust. Individually.

I'm increasingly thinking it's going to be more appropriate for companies.

Why?

Because every business is going to be attacked by startups (or cutting edge incumbents) who are going to look at how, in an AI mediated world, they can automate what can be automated, augment talent where it adds value, and redesign each and every workflow to maximise leverage from a tsunami of exponential technologies.

Every business is going to be competing with others who are built from scratch to be not 10% but 10X more productive.

Yet most companies are still debating how to deal with new ways of working four years after the pandemic started. Most companies invest next to nothing in training, least of all in training management. And most companies have no idea what is coming down the track. Their thinking is gradual, when suddenly is about to hit them.

And most companies are incentivised to operate like this. It's 'how we do it here'.

Which never used to matter that much. For all the constant 'sound and fury' nothing much did change year to year. You could afford to, indeed were encouraged to, iterate rather than disrupt. It worked. And still does work for many.

These were the 'decades where nothing happens' whereas we're now being repeatedly hit by the 'weeks where decades happen' to bastardise Lenin's famous quotation.

This week Klarna issued a press release explaining how their new AI Customer Service bot was now doing the work of 700 people. At a higher level of performance. And not as a co-pilot but as a replacement for those people.

And in this video LTX Studio released a teaser for their AI powered video production software, Version 1. Prepare to be blown away. This was supposed to be decades away.

For those in real estate two thoughts:

1. Are you thinking how to redesign your business for an AI mediated world?

2. Have you checked to see which of your customers are?

And one hypothesis: Failing to do 1 and 2 leaves you terribly exposed. Either to competitors who already are, or to seeing your portfolio turned upside down as your customers find their industries turned upside down.

As ever, change can be a bug or a feature. It's just that today the stakes are rather higher than normal.