📉   Asymmetric Inflation
🤖   AI CEO
⚙️   Master Mobilization
📉 Asymmetric Inflation
Consumers are at their breaking point. According to a Gallup survey, 55% of Americans say their financial situation is getting worse, up from 53% last year and 47% in 2024.
It’s not one thing eroding consumers’ pocketbooks. It’s asymmetric inflation.
In 2026, the price of a tomato and a gallon of gas both jumped 40%. Streaming services are up almost 20%. None of these price increases are related, but they are all eroding spending power, resilience, and confidence.
Consumers go from one inflationary shock to another. It’s like playing whack-a-mole. You get a handle on one new expense, to be hit with another.
The media paints a rosy picture. The stock market is up, and earnings reports are positive. What is less reported is growth is coming from price hikes, not units.
According to McKinsey, price increases accounted for over 80% of the luxury market’s growth. This trend carries across most consumer categories: prices are up, revenue is up, but units are down.
This story is reflected on the B2B and industrial side, too. Asymmetric inflation is eroding margins and growth, and it’s making businesses brittle.
Whether your business is B2B or B2C, your customers are being monetized to death.
When you see these trends, flip them into customer needs:
- How can you help your customers get more value for their dollar?
- How do you grow through volume, not just price increases?
🤖 AI CEO
A group of former Microsoft employees are setting out to prove AI can replace CEOs. According to a Forbes interview, Skyfall plans to acquire a software company for $1 million and attempt to run it with AI as the CEO.
My first reaction was this is a novel but impractical idea. Any small business owner knows AI cannot replace them. When you are the chief cook and bottle washer, AI isn’t going to solve the countless operational, people, and customer challenges you face on a weekly basis.
As I reflected more on the idea, I started to see a future with an AI CEO. Instead of actually running the business, as the Skyfall team envisions, what if the AI CEO is a copilot?
One of the biggest issues for mid-market founders and CEOs is they are learning on the job. Sure, you build up intuition and capabilities with time and experience, but so much of the job is new. You are confronting new decisions and challenges that will shape the future of your business.
What if you had an AI with been-there, done-that experience? What if the AI could crunch the numbers, review trends, and scenario plan?
Strategy at its core is algorithmic. This is ideal for AI, especially as it integrates with your systems and data. It could provide a copilot for a CEO to make better decisions, faster.
The AI models are not there, yet. But I can envision these capabilities emerging in the not-so-distant future.
I am curious to hear what you think. Will AI run businesses in the future? If so, where do you see the use case?
đź“ŠÂ One Stat to Watch
80%
of CEOs aren’t satisfied with AI’s productivity gains in their organizations, according to Bain & Company’s 2026 CEO Agenda Survey.
⚙️ Master Mobilization
The first few weeks of the pandemic were some of the most intense of my career. Days felt like weeks. Months felt like years. It was adrenaline-pumping, brute-force entrepreneurism.
Speed was a defining factor of recovery and success. The companies that acted fast and adapted faster gained the advantage.
At first, speed was natural. It was an instinctual fight for survival. Our businesses were under siege, and that fear and anxiety propelled companies to execute like never before.
The crisis created energy, but running on adrenaline and fear can only carry you so far.
Since then, I’ve systematized that momentum. At CoStrategy, we call it a Slingshot Strategy. Working in 90-day Slingshots, we put strategy into action.
In HBR’s article, How to Ensure Your Company Acts on Your New Strategy, the authors write, “The companies that pull away from their peers don’t mobilize when strategy changes. They are always mobilized. The pace of competitive shift means a priority that looks right today can be overtaken within months; organizations that mobilize episodically simply cannot keep up.”
Look back to moments when your team was in the zone with a clear focus on execution. That doesn’t have to be a one-off. That energy and focus is a discipline that can be harnessed and developed in your culture.
Start with a simple cadence: Commit to completing one important initiative in the next 90 days. No excuses. No delays. Put it on the board and rally your whole team around achieving it. Mobilization starts with completing one commitment at a time.
🤔 Thoughts on Today’s Issue?
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