Something big has shifted for all of us. I noticed it last week, while preparing for our Axios board meeting.
- First, there was a discussion around six-month horizons. And I kept thinking: This is pure fantasy — it’s impossible to envision our company and our world even a few months from now.
- Second, we’re having an amazing year. Yet I felt compelled to offer the board a gut check unthinkable even a year ago: Yes, we’re crushing it, but that could all change in a month. Truth is, for the first time ever, my confident line of sight is six weeks tops.
Why it matters: We have entered what I call post-processable velocity — a speed of change exceeding the ability of any individual, company, market or government to fully absorb, understand and respond to it in real time.
- We’ve moved from velocity of information outpacing human comprehension to the velocity of capabilities outpacing strategic thinking.
- The consequences for how we think and operate in this environment seem profound — and, in this moment, unknowable.
The big picture: To me, this is the end of one era and the start of something new and much bigger.
I’ve long believed that something fundamental changed in early 2007.
- That was the year we started Politico. More importantly, that’s when today’s core information ecosystem — the iPhone, Android, Facebook, Twitter, the cloud, streaming — all began to take off.
- Life, business and information started moving faster than most people could keep up with. Most never did. We just got used to being behind, or overwhelmed or confused.
For nearly two decades, that acceleration continued, then fused with AI to signal that something very different was ahead. I believe we have now fully crossed that new line.
- The defining change of the past 20 years was the velocity of information. News broke instantly. Ideas spread quickly and globally. Public opinion shifted or clouded fast. Everyone could see more, say more and react more.
- The defining change now is the velocity of capability: What a person can do, what AI can unleash, what a small team can build, what a competitor can launch, and what an entire industry can automate can change in mere weeks.
- The cycle seems set and accelerating. Intelligence gets better, faster, so AI capabilities rise. The cost eventually falls, as competition rises and businesses adjust. The use spreads — unevenly, messily, but undoubtedly.
State of play: As someone who reads about, uses and implements AI companywide voraciously, it now feels almost incomprehensibly hard to keep up with the change.
- Capability velocity makes it hard to know what is possible — for everyone.
- When you can’t reliably know what’s possible six weeks from now, planning on timelines of months or years seems hard, if not silly.
Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not suggesting that strategy is dead. But your old ways of thinking about how to build it are.
- Most strategic planning is built on a reasonably stable set of facts: known competitors, understandable technologies, predictable customer behavior and capabilities that improve gradually. It’s always been possible to plan and execute against those facts.
- Post-processable velocity destroys that stability. A decision can be logical when made and obsolete by the time it’s implemented. A staffing plan can be based on tasks that software learns to perform weeks later. Government writes rules that feel antiquated once they’re law.
In moments like this, I always return to Donald Rumsfeld’s concept of “known knowns” and Silicon Valley’s obsession with “first principles.” I try to fuse both with our Axios philosophy of “simplify.”
- It all comes down to answering these three questions. What do we know to be true? What do we know matters most? What are the fewest things we can do with the fewest people in the shortest period of time?
The bottom line: It’s one thing to know that we’re in this age of post-processable velocity, but it’s another to actually meet this moment. Four ideas come to mind that everyone can use:
- No-regret moves. Loosen reliance on plans that require you to be right about things far in the future. The way forward? Strong directions, with loosely held paths.
- Monthly mentality. Force yourself to rethink your focus and the tools you use every month. That’s how fast things are changing.
- Simplify. The fewer things you do, with fewer bureaucratic obstacles, the easier it will be to evolve and succeed. (We have a book coming out on this topic.)
- Amplify human intelligence. Keep evolving your information inputs so you can see the shifting field more clearly. This requires constantly updating how and where you get informed.
📈 If you’re a CEO or on a CEO’s team: Ask to join Jim’s new weekly Axios C-Suite newsletter.
- Preorder our book, “Simplify,” coming Sept. 15.
