AI is not your strategy: Author and business advisor Brian Evergreen explains why vision comes first

We talk a lot about the future of work.

We talk a lot about where things are headed from a reactive perspective.

When you talk about it that way, you're resigning and saying, "I hope that whoever builds that future, that there's a good place for me and my organization in it." So instead I say, no, we're at a moment in time where we all know there's this inflection point where we need to make some strategic decisions.

So what is the future that you want to be, and what future of work do you want to build for yourself and your organization or your department? And then what would have to be true for you to be able to do that?

[upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to the GeekWire Podcast.

[audience applauds] I am GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop, and we are coming to you this week from El Gaucho restaurant in Bellevue, Washington.

This is GeekWire's Agents of Transformation series.

We're hosting it in partnership with Accenture, and I'm very pleased to welcome here for this dinner audience of Accenture and Microsoft executives, Bryan Evergreen.

Bryan, it's great to have you here.

Thank you.

[audience applauds] It's great to be here.

Bryan Evergreen is a strategist, author, and technology executive who's spent his career at the intersection of AI and organizational leadership, including stints at Accenture and AWS and Microsoft.

I wanna talk about your experiences at those companies later on, Bryan.

At Microsoft, you served as US AI strategy lead and later ran autonomous AI co-innovation in Microsoft Research.

He wrote the book Autonomous Transformation: Creating a More Human Future in the Era of AI, which will form the basis for much of our conversation tonight.

And the thing that makes his perspective in the book especially interesting right now is that you actually wrote this before ChatGPT launched.

You were making the case for rethinking how organizations approach AI before the rest of the world was losing its mind.

Reinventing.

Reinventing.

Reinventing, exactly.

So today he runs the Future Solving Company, advising Fortune 500 executives, and he's got a sharp and sometimes provocative take on what companies are getting wrong, and right, as they rush to adopt AI and agents.

So Bryan, it's great to have you here.

Thank you.

I'm happy to be here.

We talk a lot about the future of work.

We talk a lot about where things are headed from a reactive perspective.

When you talk about it that way, you're resigning and saying, "I hope that whoever builds that future, that there's a good place for me and my organization in it." So instead I say, no, we're at a moment in time where we all know there's this inflection point where we need to make some strategic decisions.

So what is the future that you want to be, and what future of work do you want to build for yourself and your organization or your department? And then what would have to be true for you to be able to do that?

[upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to the GeekWire Podcast.

[audience applauds] I am GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop, and we are coming to you this week from El Gaucho restaurant in Bellevue, Washington.

This is GeekWire's Agents of Transformation series.

We're hosting it in partnership with Accenture, and I'm very pleased to welcome here for this dinner audience of Accenture and Microsoft executives, Bryan Evergreen.

Bryan, it's great to have you here.

Thank you.

[audience applauds] It's great to be here.

Bryan Evergreen is a strategist, author, and technology executive who's spent his career at the intersection of AI and organizational leadership, including stints at Accenture and AWS and Microsoft.

I wanna talk about your experiences at those companies later on, Bryan.

At Microsoft, you served as US AI strategy lead and later ran autonomous AI co-innovation in Microsoft Research.

He wrote the book Autonomous Transformation: Creating a More Human Future in the Era of AI, which will form the basis for much of our conversation tonight.

And the thing that makes his perspective in the book especially interesting right now is that you actually wrote this before ChatGPT launched.

You were making the case for rethinking how organizations approach AI before the rest of the world was losing its mind.

Reinventing.

Reinventing.

Reinventing, exactly.

So today he runs the Future Solving Company, advising Fortune 500 executives, and he's got a sharp and sometimes provocative take on what companies are getting wrong, and right, as they rush to adopt AI and agents.

So Bryan, it's great to have you here.

Thank you.

I'm happy to be here.