The importance of the entire fish – scales and all
World Snowshoe Championships coming to Ariens Nordic Center in Brillion
August 11, 2025
In a world of infinite feedback loops, we’re at risk of optimizing ourselves into competitive disconnection.
It struck me recently how the business world is diverging quickly.
On one side, you have companies chasing digital moats, tuning their products with relentless, AI-driven feedback loops and measuring progress in lines of behavioral data.
On the other hand, you see leaders who reject the hype, double down on focus and view AI as a costly distraction from their teams and bottom line.
But what if there’s another way?
As someone who values both innovation and grounded execution, I find myself most drawn to businesses that evolve thoughtfully.
Businesses that grow without discarding what made them valuable in the first place: their people, their purpose and their relationships.
Let’s pause and consider how AI is shaping not just our tools but our mindsets.
A path that’s neither disengaged nor overengineered.
Three business mindsets in an AI moment
As AI moves deeper into the mainstream, business leaders tend to fall into one of three patterns of thought.
These aren’t just attitudes toward technology – they’re reflections of how each leader sees change itself.
The revolutionaries
Revolutionaries often think at the industry level.
They’re not just applying AI – they’re using it to reimagine entire categories, markets and models.
They seek to own the future, not just adapt to it.
In this world, speed matters – so does IP.
Dynamic AI feedback loops become moats.
Human behavior becomes fuel.
The product is often the data.
In emerging industries or times of major disruption, revolutionaries are often exactly what’s needed to redefine what’s possible.
But there’s a shadow side: In established businesses, revolutionaries risk becoming heretics.
Their vision can outpace what their teams, cultures or customers are ready to embrace.
What starts as innovation could feel like a disconnection from reality – especially when it breaks trust, disorients staff or discards hard-earned operational wisdom.
Their strength is boldness.
Their weakness is misalignment.
They lead revolutions, but revolutions can strain the very relationships that made change possible.
The evolutionaries
Evolutionaries think at the organizational level.
They aren’t trying to disrupt industries, but are often trying to make their own businesses better.
They look for real process improvement, stronger decision-making and new ways to empower people.
These leaders are grounded.
They adopt slowly, test responsibly and value AI that serves clear business goals.
They see potential, but don’t chase flash.
For them, AI is part of a larger strategy, not a magic bullet.
Their risk?
Waiting too long for a “perfect” plan or becoming overwhelmed by noise.
The pragmatists
Pragmatists are focused and disciplined often at the team level.
They often approach AI through a practical lens: it’s a cost center first, waste remover second.
If a tool doesn’t clearly reduce expenses or free up its team’s time, it doesn’t make the cut.
They tend to adopt later after the hype fades and tools have proven their value.
This protects their teams from distraction and helps ensure investments serve real priorities.
But by waiting, they sometimes miss the chance to shape outcomes early.
What remains is often just utility.
Their strength is focus – but without a broader vision, their stack can become fragmented, and AI ends up as another tool and not a capability layer.
Ironically, the same discipline that filters out noise can also filter out momentum, margin or morale.
The real divide isn’t technical but philosophical
Technology may be what’s changing, but philosophy is what’s being revealed.
In conversations about AI, it’s easy to get caught up in platforms, features and demos.
But underneath all of that, the real split isn’t about tooling – it’s about temperament.
It’s about what a business believes progress should look like and for whom.
- Revolutionaries are driven by disruption. They seek to outpace the present by creating entirely new value. But in legacy industries, they often become heretics that are right in theory but rejected by habit.
- Evolutionaries pursue growth by refinement. They believe in compound innovation, steadily tuning what works. Their challenge is inertia because thoughtful change can stall in the comfort of what already works.
- Pragmatists guard what works. They see AI as a tactical choice, not a strategic one. Their strength is focus. Their risk is tunnel vision, where clarity in the known misses what’s truly possible.
This is the real divide: not who has the best AI, but who has the clearest intent.
AI doesn’t level the playing field – it amplifies what’s already there, such as your values, your gaps, your culture, your clarity.
So, the better question isn’t “Which AI tools should we use?” but “What kind of business do we want AI to make us more of?”
Healthy AI evolution
Though revolutionaries risk a rocky path through misalignment, and pragmatists risk a narrow one through tunnel vision, evolutionaries offer a slower, steadier kind of progress rooted in grounded clarity and open curiosity.
But successful evolution doesn’t happen by chance.
It requires intention and informed design.
Here are three principles I’ve seen help organizations embrace AI without losing what they value:
Design for people first, not efficiency alone
AI can automate tasks, but it’s most powerful when it amplifies human capability.
Don’t start with, “What can we replace?”
Start with, “What do we want to elevate?”
In many cases, the right AI move isn’t to remove a role – it’s to remove the noise around a role so people can do more of what they’re great at.
That’s not cost-cutting, that’s culture-building.
Adopt tools that align to strategy, not hype
Every week brings a new platform promising to “revolutionize” your business.
Ignore them unless they clearly serve your goals.
The best AI adoption happens in context:
- Automating repetitive intake in customer service
- Enhancing decision support in operations
- Speeding up proposal creation for sales teams
Even in a lab setting, you still need a lens.
Context drives the best results. Start small. Start useful. Let success scale.
Invest in capability, not just tools
Tools are temporary – capability is transferable.
The businesses that win long term will be the ones that build internal understanding.
That might look like:
- Equipping staff with AI fluency to ask better questions and make informed decisions
- Embedding AI into workflows that expose patterns, gaps or risk
- Using assistants not just to do, but to inform, like generating documentation, suggesting improvements or reinforcing policies in real time
Understanding is an asset.
You can build it with people, augment it with AI, or do both.
Evolving wisely
AI isn’t a revolution for most businesses – it’s not irrelevant either.
It’s something more deliberate and ultimately more powerful.
It’s evolution, and when done well, it doesn’t just upgrade systems.
It upgrades understanding.
But this evolution doesn’t come from adopting the right tool.
It comes from aligning technology with what you actually care about:
- Clarity over chaos
- Capability over consumption
- Progress over perfection
- Connection over competition
In a world of infinite feedback loops, it’s tempting to optimize everything.
But optimization without wisdom just accelerates the gap between what we can do and what we should do.
Though moats protect, bridges connect.
The businesses that lead will be the ones who know when to do both and how to align them with what matters.
In the end, AI doesn’t define your business – your choices do.
