Our leadership team is arguing over the 3-Year Picture on our V/TO®. Some think our industry will be completely automated by AI in three years, while others think the core service will remain human-driven. How do we establish a concrete, unifying strategic target when we have such fundamentally different views on how AI will rewrite our market?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a leadership team is split on the future of their industry, trying to predict the exact state of technology in three years will paralyze your strategic planning. You must shift the focus from the technology itself to the client experience. The V/TO® is designed to align your team on a shared vision, not to make perfect technological predictions.

To resolve this disagreement, schedule a session to focus solely on your 3-Year Picture. Start by defining what your target market will demand in three years, regardless of how it is produced. They will want faster turnaround times, higher accuracy, and deeper insights. Once you agree on these market demands, you can define your future state using measurable metrics rather than technical execution methods.

Focus your 3-Year Picture on metrics like revenue, profit margin, geographic reach, and structural complexity. Instead of debating whether AI or humans do the work, define the desired outcome, such as reducing service delivery time from five days to five minutes. This shifts the debate from an ideological argument about automation to a practical operational goal.

Once these outcomes are locked in on your V/TO®, you can delegate the technical roadmap to your quarterly Rocks. This allows your team to test, adapt, and implement AI tools incrementally without needing to agree on a philosophical vision of the future. You will build a flexible, unified team that is focused on meeting client demands, regardless of which tools ultimately win the market.