How AI Is Becoming Infrastructure

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January over already. How's 2026 treating you so far?

It was Hockey Day in Canada in Moncton. My daughter played outdoor shinny with Andrew Ference and Jennifer Botterill last week. Snow falling, no scoreboard, just kids on the ice. She had no idea she was skating with legends. She Just didn't want to come off the ice.

Those are the moments. The ones I’m so grateful I’ve been been able to create a life to show up for. It is my wish for every leader. Create a business that serves your best life. 

AI is helping me do this.

At work, I've been in rooms teaching AI strategy eight times already this month. And as I've updated our decks for each session, something's become clear: the mindset shift happening right now is palpable.

Here's what I'm seeing:

The AI game is shifting faster than most people realize.

Twelve months ago, writing a solid prompt put you ahead of 80% of your competitors.

Today that's baseline.

We're entering the phase where AI stops being a novelty and starts becoming infrastructure—and the companies figuring that out now are going to have a serious head start.

AI proficiency in 2026 will be about incorporating AI into meaningful, value-adding work every single week.

Here's what that shift actually looks like for business leaders:

1. Stop "Chatting," Start "Choreographing"

To see real ROI, we have to move from Augmentation (human-AI collaboration) to Agentic AI (software that executes work with human checks).

But there's a problem.

The Workflow Wall: Reliability drops significantly as tasks get longer. For tasks that take humans 5+ hours, AI success rates fall below 45%.

The Fix: You can't hand AI a marathon. You have to redesign workflows into "chunks"— smaller steps where the AI can maintain high success rates.

The New Skill: Your team no longer needs to execute every task. They need to choreograph and validate the output. Domain mastery becomes quality control, not production.

This is the shift from co-pilot to crew.

2. The Skill Paradox: Why Your Best People Get the Best Results

Here's a stat that should make you uncomfortable:

There's a near-perfect correlation (r > 0.92) between the sophistication of a human's input and the answer AI can give you.

HR [NEW LAUNCH] : ​AI Amplified HR​ → Redesigning how your team develops and connects daily activities to targets.

This program takes the principles above and makes them executable in this core area of your business.

Because strategy without execution is just a really expensive conversation.

What's next for you?

If you're feeling the gap between where your AI adoption is and where it needs to be... you're not alone.

Most leaders are stuck in "Tool Experimentation" and a "Use Case Desert."

The question isn't whether AI will reshape your business. It's whether you'll lead that shift or spend the next two years catching up.