Briefing #22: The ROI of Impossible
AI in 2026 won't be about doing things faster, but doing things we've never done before.
Note: This briefing was originally published on LinkedIn on December 19, 2025. It has been migrated to our new home on Substack to create a complete archive. Multi-format features like video and audio commentary are available for all new briefings published from April 2026 onwards.
There’s a cynicism gripping the market, and it’s not hard to understand why.
For years, the narrative of business has been dominated by a singular focus: delivering shareholder returns by extracting maximum value for minimal effort. This has led to a consumer landscape where it’s easy to feel constantly nickeled and dimed, sold products that feel less durable, and served by systems that prioritize cost-cutting over customer experience.
Now, into this environment, we’ve introduced AI. It maybe isn’t a surprise then that in some corners of the market, the reaction to AI has been one of skepticism.
When companies deploy AI to automate an already frustrating customer service experience, consumers react accordingly. They ask the question: “What exactly am I paying for?” They may see AI not as an innovation, but as the next logical step in a long history of companies trying to do as little as possible.
This is today’s great, unspoken tension. And it’s why the mainstay playbook of business could well be on the cusp of implosion.
I’m reminded of a lesson from early in my career in financial services. A wise senior leader shared with me that heavily regulated industries, such as banking, are sometimes slow to change because those in charge have become stewards of a system they grew up with. Such leaders have a hard time envisioning a world where the system they were taught to be “the way things are done” might one day no longer exist.
That same dynamic isn’t unique to banking. It’s playing out across every industry today. Leaders are clinging to an outdated playbook, not because it’s effective, but because it’s familiar.
But a new playbook is being written. Its central tenet is not efficiency, but value creation.
The old playbook asked: “How can we optimize this process?”
The new playbook asks: “What new form of value can we create that makes the old process obsolete?”
This is the strategic shift that AI enables. AI is not just a tool for optimization; it’s an engine for imagination. It offers us the chance to partner with a non-human intelligence, a creative collaborator that can help us reframe problems we once thought impossible to solve. It allows us to offload the work we are merely competent at, freeing us to flourish in the areas where we are truly brilliant.
As we head into 2026, the question is not whether we will face challenges — we will. The question is what direction we’ll choose to pursue.
Will we continue to defend pre-AI ways of thinking that are becoming increasingly irrelevant? Or will we embrace the disruption, carve out new ways of doing things, and, in the process, discover new ways to define success?
The future that awaits us will be decided by the clash of these two playbooks. Will we believe the world can never be any different? Or will we believe that the future ahead is what we make of it?
Our only limitations will be the ones we place on ourselves.