Last weekend, I was glued to my desk. I’ve been experimenting with an AI trend that seems to be happening very quietly in the techie world (did you see me post it on LinkedIn?). Let’s look at strategic implications, and what you can do about it practically.
What’s just happened in AI
An important AI development has happened in the last few weeks. Technical stuff, that hasn’t reached the business community yet.
It will affect how work gets done across most strategic white-collar work.
It’s called Model Context Protocol (MCP), and it’s just been adopted by both Open AI (ChatGPT) and Google, who have followed Anthropic (Claude).
In simple terms: MCP connects your apps, tools, data, and documents to AI. This is a common standard for AI Chatbots to take actions, not just give us answers. It allows us to get all sorts of thing done, just by typing a plain English sentence into a chatbot (like ChatGPT), or simply talking to it (like I do to Siri on my iphone). Forget fancy prompts.
It’s what the Internet Protocol (IP) did to get us on the web in the 90s. We all use an IP address every day, and it has changed our world.
Now, you might be wondering, why is Lisa writing about this stuff. She usually talks about implementing strategic initiatives. In the strategy flywheel. I wrote about last week, AI is accelerating every part below: business strategy, change management, project management and culture.
Turbochargers ApproachTM
9 strategic implications of AI Agents and MCP
Here are the key 9 strategic implications:
1. The administrative, routine parts of our roles is being delegated to AI. Process improvement is already available to us personally.
2. No need to log in to apps or learn new software. We’ll be able to do a substantial part of our work just by asking a chatbot eg “update my report”, “submit my expense claim.”
3. Marketing is being re-imagined. Content creation is automated with context drawn from your brand assets and current data. I can’t believe what I’m seeing inside the Vibe Marketing community.
4. Sales lead generation and nurturing is becoming hyper-personalized, using real-time data and language that adapts to each client.
5. We are each responsible for our own personal brand. Personal branding is becoming easier, with AI learning our language, preferences (our brand voice), priorities and our IP.
6. The B2B SaaS subscription model is under pressure. We won’t pay for an individual app if our AI agent can do the job for us DIY.
7. Learning is undergoing a makeover; acceleration of learning in the flow of work.
8. As project work speeds up, the main obstacle is getting people in your organization to agree on the way forward. So the biggest advantage accrues to those who can facilitate the agreement of humans, and companies with consistent, strong cultures (not necessarily high performance).
9. We’re going to need more change management.
Orchestrating AI in the workplace (with apologies to music lovers)
3 Tips for being AI ready
1. Ramp up your learning. Don’t think this is a little tech thing that will pass. This is massively disruptive for businesses and your current initiatives underway. Change how you learn.
2. Identify the strategic implications for your functional area and role. Discuss with your team or colleagues. Join a community of like-minded professionals. (Have you considered The Turbochargers?)
3. Prioritize with AI, customer and staff input. I’m currently running planning workshops with clients to identify AI use cases and prioritize solutions. We’re using AI, our own judgement, staff feedback and customer research to iterate the solutions.
I’m excited about what’s coming, and I want to encourage you to experiment. Dive in. It’s fun. Access our article library here
“The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed.”
William Gibson, Author
PS More Ways to Accelerate your Strategy
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About Lisa Carlin
Lisa Carlin is a Strategy Execution Specialist. She works with business leaders to go from strategy to plan to result, in tough environments. Her clients love having her expertise and guidance to navigate their workplace culture and use AI to achieve success.
Lisa is author of the globally acclaimed newsletter, Turbocharge Weekly, read by 8,000 business leaders.
Lisa’s career includes roles at McKinsey and Accenture, then running her own business since 1999. Over this time she has delivered over 50 implementations with a 96% success rate.