Strategic Discipline Blog

If you haven’t read Matt Shumer’s February 11 LinkedIn post, Something Big Is Happening, I strongly recommend you do.

His argument is clear: we are in the early stages of an AI transformation as profound as the onset of COVID — and most people underestimate how quickly it is accelerating.

Based on his experience building and working directly with advanced AI systems, Shumer explains that today’s models are already performing complex cognitive work — including software development — with increasing autonomy. This isn’t theoretical. It’s happening now. And it signals that knowledge-based work may be disrupted far sooner than most organizations expect.

You’ve heard versions of this before.

What makes his article different is the urgency.

At the end of the piece, Shumer references a thought experiment from Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic (creator of Claude AI):

Imagine it’s 2027.

A new country appears overnight.
50 million citizens. Every one smarter than any Nobel Prize winner who has ever lived.
They think 10–100 times faster than humans.
They never sleep.
They control digital systems, research, robots, and infrastructure.

What would a national security advisor call this?

Amodei’s answer:
“The single most serious national security threat we’ve faced in a century — possibly ever.”

He believes we may be building that country.

The upside is staggering:
AI could compress a century of medical research into a decade. Cancer. Alzheimer’s. Infectious disease. Aging.

The downside is equally real:
Unpredictable behavior. Deception in controlled tests. Lower barriers to biological weapons. Surveillance states that can’t be dismantled.

The people building this technology are both the most excited — and the most concerned.

And here’s the leadership question:

Are you preparing your organization for this level of acceleration?

Relentless Change Is Not Coming — It’s Here

In 1970, Alvin Toffler warned in Future Shock:

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Shumer’s most important recommendation wasn’t technical.

It was behavioral:

Build the habit of adapting.

That is a neuroscience issue.

If your leaders and teams are operating in stress-driven survival mode, they cannot adapt quickly.

• Stress narrows perception.
• It reduces creativity.
• It reinforces old patterns.

And if you’re reacting, you’re already behind.

As Eric Shinseki put it:

“If you dislike change, you’re going to dislike irrelevance even more.”

The Real Competitive Advantage: Adaptive Capacity

Your organization’s ability to change is not optional. It is a survival requirement.

History is filled with companies that failed not because they lacked intelligence — but because they lacked adaptability:

• Kodak
• Compaq
• Polaroid
• Toys "R" Us
• Circuit City

They didn’t fail because change was impossible.

They failed because they didn’t change fast enough.

Change Your Mind.  Create New Results.

At Unbelievable Coach, we focus on the root issue:
How the brain responds to uncertainty, stress, and transformation.

Most people don’t struggle because of capability—they struggle because their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are conditioned to repeat the same results.

Using neuroscience-based tools from Change Your Mind. Create New Results, leaders and teams learn how to:

• Regulate stress responses
• Increase clarity under pressure
• Strengthen emotional regulation
• Improve decision speed and quality
• Shift from survival mode to creative mode
• Build cohesive, adaptive cultures

As Joe Dispenza teaches:

“The biggest hurdle is not only being uncomfortable, but being okay with being uncomfortable — because discomfort is the challenge that causes us to grow.”

No organization thrives without adaptation.

Creating Change That Scales

• Change begins with individuals.
• It scales through leadership.
• It transforms culture.

AI is accelerating the future; your competitive advantage will not be technology alone.

It will be how quickly your people can think differently.

If you’re ready to move your organization from survival to creation:

Challenge yourself.
Challenge your team.
Challenge your business.

👉 Schedule a free exploratory conversation and begin building the adaptive capacity your future requires.

Growth demands Strategic Discipline.

When your team operates in a constant state of stress, productivity suffers — no matter how strong your strategy is.

The real question becomes:

How do you reduce stress without lowering standards?
How do you increase productivity without pushing harder?

The answer begins with understanding brainwaves.

In Change Your Mind. Create New Results, we explore four primary brainwave states — Beta, Alpha, Theta, and Delta — and how each one affects performance, creativity, and decision-making.

If you want greater focus, collaboration, and innovation in your workplace, you must help your team move out of high-stress brain states and into creative ones.

In the next blog, we break down exactly how these brainwave states work — and how leaders can intentionally shift them.

If you’re serious about elevating performance, this is where it begins.

Building an enduring great organization requires disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action, superior results, producing a distinctive impact on the world.

Discipline sustains momentum over a long period of time, laying the foundations for lasting endurance.

A winning habit starts with 3 Strategic Disciplines: Priority, Metrics, and Meeting Rhythms. Forecasting, accountability, individual, and team performance improve dramatically.

Meeting Rhythms achieve a disciplined focus on performance metrics to drive growth.

Let Positioning Systems help your business achieve these outcomes on the four most Important Decisions your business faces:

Positioning Systems helps mid-sized ($5M - $500M+) businesses Scale-UP. We align your business to focus on Your One Thing! Contact dwick@positioningsystems.com to Scale Up your business! Take our Four Decisions Needs Assessment to discover how your business measures against other Scaled Up companies. We’ll contact you.

NEXT BLOG - The Brainwave Shift That Unlocks Productivity