You Don’t Need Better Models—You Need a Better Strategy

Why leverage has shifted in the AI era, how to diagnose where you can actually win, and how to build a strategy that compounds while everyone else is chasing demos.

Yes, ChatGPT dropped a new model on the 14th. I’m not writing about it here on purpose. You don’t need an entire post on a model that brings the same capabilities as 4o currently has in the chatbot to the API with an emphasis on cost, speed, and incrementally better coding performance.

ChatGPT 4.1 is not pushing the edges and part of the point of this post is that model noise is going to happen all the time, and a good strategy maintains clarity regardless of the model of the model-of-the-day news and hype. Good strategy helps you distinguish news you need to pay attention to from news you can safely ignore.

This is a companion piece to my note on mapping AI workflows, which focused on how individuals and leaders can think about the motions that drive their work. The point is—if you think about motions, you then need to make strategic decisions about which motion to prioritize for AI, and that means you need a strategic frame that is durable regardless of what headlines are in tomorrow’s newspaper.

And I would contend that in the age of AI good strategy is an even more precious commodity than usual. So let’s dive in…