You Don’t Need an AI Strategy Deck—You Need Execution
By Eric Stavola – Executive IT Strategist | VP of Managed Services | Leadership Coach
“Copilot won’t save your business. But leadership over its use might.”
🔍 Executive Context
Last week I sat down with one of our sharpest Sales Engineers, and we started where most conversations should start these days: not with the tools themselves, but with the business behaviors they’re supposed to impact.
We were talking about Microsoft Copilot—and specifically, how it’s being pitched, misunderstood, or outright ignored across mid-market organizations.
“It can summarize meetings, build decks, analyze data,” he said. “But most clients still don’t know what to do with it.”
That hit hard. Because that’s the problem in a nutshell.
Copilot Isn’t the Strategy. You Are.
Here’s the real play:
Copilot creates leverage—but only if you lead its usage.
The organizations that win with AI aren’t the ones who invested in early licenses. They’re the ones who put AI to work with clarity, constraints, and coaching.
What most leaders are doing? Spinning up another AI task force. Another strategy deck. Another cross-functional exploratory committee that meets every other Wednesday and still hasn’t rolled out a single workflow.
If your AI enablement looks like your digital transformation journey, I’ve got bad news for you:
You’re going to miss the window.
Speed Is the Problem. AI Is the Multiplier.
Here’s what I told my engineer:
The root cause in nearly every client conversation—whether it’s IT, finance, operations, sales, or compliance—boils down to one thing:
Speed to act.
That’s it. Not technology. Not licensing. Not even talent.
It’s the operational lag between recognizing a need and actually responding to it.
I don’t care if it’s a security risk, a budget revision, a sales enablement gap, or a productivity problem—the drag is always in the delay.
The companies that are growing aren’t faster because they’re smarter.
They’re faster because they’ve removed friction—and Copilot, if used with intention, is a friction-removal machine.
The Real AI Maturity Model Isn’t Technical. It’s Behavioral.
Forget the 15-layer AI capability frameworks.
You can gauge a company’s maturity by asking five blunt questions, in this exact order:
- Are we predictable?
Do we have systems that deliver consistent, reliable outcomes—regardless of the human at the keyboard?
- Are we productive?
Are our people spending time on high-value work—or chasing PDFs and formatting Excel rows?
- Are we performing?
Are we moving the metrics that matter—or reacting to noise?
- Are we managing risk and compliance proactively?
Or are we still bolting on controls after the damage is done?
- Are we agile?
Can we act fast, pivot with precision, and deploy change without chaos?
- Are we growing—intentionally?
Not just top-line revenue, but capability, culture, and client value.
Every organization I’ve seen succeed with Copilot has operationalized these questions. They didn’t “do AI.” They solved for speed, clarity, and value creation—and used Copilot to enforce that motion at scale.
Stop Waiting. Start Working.
So here’s the play I’d give any executive reading this:
- Don’t ask your team, “What should our AI strategy be?”
Ask them, “Where are we losing time—and how can Copilot give it back?”
- Don’t start with a pilot group of power users.
Start with your most broken process. Put Copilot inside that pain.
- Don’t build a deck.
Build an actual workflow. Show your team where AI fits, where humans finish, and how to measure the result.
🏁 Final Word: Lead the Tool—Or It Leads You
Microsoft Copilot is here. And yes, it’s powerful.
But what’s more powerful?
A leader who isn’t waiting for a framework to arrive.
Execution eats strategy every time.
And in the age of AI, it also eats your competition.
Lead with action.
Define the workflow.
Make AI usable—not just available.
Because your team doesn’t need another north star—they need you to call the play.
