Every client meeting in 2025 had a moment – usually about 40 minutes in – where somebody said the word “strategy” next to the word “AI.” Sometimes it was the CEO. Sometimes it was us. It was almost never useful.
Strategy is a trailing indicator
You don’t write an AI strategy, then ship AI features. You ship three small features, watch what happens, and then – maybe – write a strategy. The strategy is the summary of the shipping, not the thing that causes it.
What “small” looks like
A lead-intake form that pre-summarizes the prospect for the sales team. An internal search that answers questions instead of returning a list of links. A CMS field that drafts the meta description from the article body. None of these are the future. All of them pay for themselves in a quarter.
The shops we trust are the ones shipping the third thing on that list, not the ones writing the strategy deck.