In my recent whitepaper, Leading Through Strategic Uncertainty, I argue that the greatest risk facing executive teams isn’t uncertainty itself but misdiagnosing it.

Right now, AI is where that risk is most acute. And while it’s tempting to assume AI puts every organisation in the Not-Normal! Territory of uncertainty, it doesn’t.

My whitepaper offers a simple diagnosis of uncertainty, and applied to AI it looks like this:

If AI changes how you play, reshaping workflows, productivity and capabilities while your strategic logic holds, you face Normal uncertainty. The focus is operations and the response is to implement with discipline.

If AI changes the conditions, putting pressure on assumptions about customers, economics, speed, workforce or competitors, you face Abnormal uncertainty. Your destination still makes sense, but the route must change. The focus in this case is competition and the response is to adjust.

If AI changes the game, shifting who can compete, what customers value, or how you create and capture value, you face Not-Normal! uncertainty. The focus is survival and the response is to test whether your strategy still stands and, where needed, re-cast it.

The operations, competition and survival lens comes from my work with leadership and technology specialist Dr John Burgin, and it reminds us that the levels are connected: an operations decision can quickly become a survival question.

As my whitepaper argues, different parts of an organisation can sit at different levels at once, and executive teams without a shared diagnosis talk past each other. With AI, the question shifts from how we use it to which assumptions in our strategy it is invalidating. If AI reaches its plausible potential in your sector, does the logic underpinning your current strategy still hold?

If your leadership team can’t answer this with a shared view, that’s precisely where a strategic clarity conversation should begin.

And, as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.