AI Strategy: It’s Giving ‘Concepts of a Plan’
Scroll any job board right now and you’d think every company on earth suddenly woke up and discovered fire.
AI Strategist.
AI Program Manager.
AI Integration Lead.
Finance + AI.
IT + AI.
Insert-Your-Department-Here + AI.
Everyone is sprinting toward the shiny thing. If it has the letters “AI” in it, it’s automatically “innovative.” Companies are treating AI like a clearance sale—grab whatever title you can before it’s gone. The rush is loud, but the strategy behind it? It’s giving “concepts of a plan". And we see how well that approach has worked out for America…but I digress :)
The part that’s missing in this frenzy is the same part Corporate America always forgets: Humans.
AI is only as strong as the people shaping it. And right now, that truth is being ignored at scale — not just with words, but with actions. Companies are laying off the people who actually understand their business, not grooming employees for promotion, and failing to create pathways for internal talent to transition into newly emerging AI-driven roles. Instead of developing the humans who could make AI strategy stronger, organizations are sidelining them… all while insisting they’re preparing for the future.
AI Is Fast — But Humans Make It Smart
AI can do what a human does — just at a faster rate. It can scan the internet, scrape public data, and assemble a decent baseline of your company. But that baseline is shallow. It’s whatever is publicly visible. What AI cannot do is absorb the real intelligence your team carries:
The lived experience of serving your customers
The nuance of your internal operations
The unwritten rules and institutional knowledge
The workarounds your people invented because a process never made sense
The “here’s what actually happens” that never shows up in a policy manual
That is the difference between generic AI output and company-specific intelligence. I tell people all the time: If the government has granted civilians access to something this powerful — note-taking AI, design tools, assistants, automation platforms — it’s because AI still needs humans to do the heavy lifting of context, nuance, and judgment.
AI is a multiplier, not a mind reader. It accelerates what already exists. It does not fix what is broken or unclear.
AI becomes tailor-made only when your people — the ones who actually live the work — pour their knowledge into it. The magic isn’t in the speed. It’s in how humans shape the technology to understand the things the internet doesn’t know and never will.
The Irony Nobody Wants to Talk About
Here’s the part that makes me tilt my head: Companies are eliminating long-tenured talent — employees with 5, 10, 15, 20 years of institutional knowledge — only to outsource AI strategy to someone brand new who has zero context.
Imagine firing the person who built the house, and then hiring a stranger to remodel it, and then being shocked when the foundation cracks. Companies want a future-ready workforce while burning the very bridge to get there.
The Leadership Problem Behind the AI Problem
Let’s call a spade a spade. This AI scramble is exposing leadership gaps. Strong leaders think:
How do we bring our people along?
Who already has the knowledge we need?
What processes need rewiring before we add technology?
How do we build sustainable infrastructure around this?
Weak leaders think:
Who can we cut?
What’s everyone else doing?
Can we hire a shiny new role to fix a problem we never addressed internally?
This isn’t an AI crisis. It’s a leadership crisis wearing an AI mask… I SAID WHAT I SAID!
Innovation Isn’t Just Technology — It’s Stewardship
Innovation requires courage to rethink processes, not just people. Clarity to understand the problem before buying the solution. Care to center humans, not hype.
That is where The Dezonie Collective operates, at the intersection of people, process, and progress. Not in the panic. Not in the trend chasing. Not in the “AI will save us” fantasy. We help organizations design strategies rooted in truth. AI doesn’t replace your people. AI amplifies your people — but only if you empower them first.
You can’t automate what you don’t understand. You can’t innovate what you refuse to invest in. And you cannot build a future-ready organization by bypassing the human beings who hold your institutional blueprint.
If You Want a Resilient AI Strategy, Start With Your People
Before rewriting job descriptions, talk to your team. Before outsourcing intelligence, look at who already has it. Before chasing the next wave, strengthen your foundation. AI is powerful, but it isn’t magic. Companies that win this next era won’t be the ones who jump on the loudest trend. They’ll be the ones who finally learn to lead with intention, building strategies shaped by humans and supported by technology, not the other way around.
