05 Feb. AI as a Strategic Lever – From Planning to Negotiation
AI is a tool, not a strategy. This post explains why strategy still starts the old-school way - and where AI truly changes the game, especially in negotiations.Unless you plan to build an LLM platform to compete with OpenAI or Google, AI is probably not your strategic endgame. AI is a strategic enabler.
Strategy itself remains old school: What really moves the needle on cost or market value? Where are your must-win battles? What will matter in 12–36 months, not just this quarter? And where is competition heading next? Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.
Nothing new there. Except that you may use AI to answer some of those questions (then see post 6 of this series).
What you do in the field of AI only comes into play in this context. It does so through two very concrete questions:
- Internal: Where can AI help you execute your strategy faster, more consistently, or with less friction? In short: where is AI part of the solution?
- External: Where is AI eroding your existing edge and where could it sharpen value creation instead of commoditizing it? In short: where will AI likely become a high risk factor, and how do you respond?
How and where do you start your AI integration? You will already have a good idea from the above. But there’s more.
The organizational strategist will say: AI is so transformative that you have to touch everything in parallel: technology base, legacy systems, data, capabilities, governance. Build something future-proof fundamentally new.
The practical one: Better to start somewhere than not at all. Don’t boil the ocean. It’s a moving target anyway.
And you will find all kinds of implementation approaches: horizontal through the organization, vertical along your production chain, management-centric, product-centric. You name it.
And all have a point. The only thing you should avoid is buying a bunch of software products without a clear game plan. The important transformation is in your organization, not on your servers.
This is where negotiations re-enter the picture. Negotiations sit exactly at the intersection of strategy and execution. They turn priorities into trade-offs, uncertainty into decisions, and strategy into outcomes. That makes them one of the first places where unclear strategy, weak governance, or poorly integrated AI becomes visible - and costly.
If AI changes how strategies are developed, executed, and competed, negotiations must change with it - in preparation, governance, and decision discipline.
Post 12 closes the loop: where to start, what to pilot, and how to move without boiling the ocean.
*) recommended further reading on the topic of AI strategy: Rebecca Homkes, Oct. 2025, “Want to lead with AI? Drop your AI Strategy and focus on these four planks instead”
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