GrowthPath Partners LLC
Empowering Purpose-Driven Growth
Winding down here so tried building a holiday “Name That Tune” game for my kids this morning. Took 10 minutes. ☕🎄
A couple of years ago? I would’ve just bought a board game.
Today I described what I wanted in plain English and AI coded it for me. Is it still “geeking out” if I didn’t write a single line of code? Asking for a friend. 😉
Link in comments if you want to play. Enjoy!
I tried to record a thoughtful holiday message. The dog had other plans.
Rather than stressing, I asked OpenAI’s Sora to recreate the moment. It didn’t quite get the physics right, but it’s close enough. 🤪
Here’s to giving ourselves (and AI) grace this season and in 2026.
Wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas and happy holidays! 🎄
#Sora #GenerativeAI #HolidayMessage
A year ago, turning my newsletter into a podcast, video, and infographic would have taken a team. Now it takes five minutes.
NotebookLM just added infographics and slides to its output options. I already use it to create the AI podcast and video explainer versions of my newsletters. Now I can also generate infographics for the cover image and slides if I need them.
I fed it my year-end newsletter (pdf), asked it to focus on the 3 key learnings in 2025 and priorities for 2026, shared my brand colors, and told it to include a small citation with my website at the bottom.
It generated several infographic options (see below). They’re all visually striking. But I went with the first one because it captured the:
fluid connection between 2025 and 2026 and
best insights from each year clearly.
The core asset is still the hard part. The thinking, the structure, the story. That takes the most brainpower and time, even when collaborating with AI. In fact, I found that working with AI on strategy oftentimes takes longer because I’m uncovering more insights, exploring different angles, and iterating more than I would alone. It takes longer but the results are better.
But once you have that core asset, AI helps you reach people in whatever format works best for them.
The AI handles the formats. You bring the thinking.
Full newsletter (in various formats) in comments if you missed it.
Curious: Which design would you have picked? 1, 2, or 3?
80-85% of AI use is still about speed. That’s a problem. McKinsey found that workflow redesign, not faster content creation, drives the biggest bottom-line impact from gen AI. Many companies are optimizing the wrong thing.
My year-end newsletter is below. What we learned in 2025 and where to focus in 2026.
AI teammates went mainstream. Custom GPT usage up 19x.
AI now forms opinions about your brand before humans do. Those visitors convert 4.4x higher.
Speed was the starting point, but only 3-5% of teams are pushing into “innovation,” work that wasn’t possible before. That’s where humans become essential.
Reimagine workflows. Don’t automate the org chart. Redesign the customer journey to eliminate handoffs.
Prepare for AI agents. They are already researching, comparing, and buying on behalf of your customers.
Scale the human + AI model. Move from individual trailblazers to organizational adoption via upskilling, governance, and integration enablement.
The messy middle of adoption is coming. That’s a sign you’re doing it right.
This newsletter features insights from Godard Abel (CEO, G2), Anna Griffin (CMO, Commvault), Wil Reynolds (VP of Innovation, Seer Interactive), and Megan Cabrera (VP of Marketing Ops). Leaders doing the work and generous enough to share what they’re learning. Grateful for each of them.
Prefer audio or video? I created a 7-min AI video explainer and a 12-min AI podcast version (links in comments) of the newsletter using NotebookLM to cater to different learning styles. I reviewed these AI outputs personally for accuracy and to ensure responsible use.
Feel free to come back to this newsletter a few times as I’ve shared links to related topics. Ideal for rabbitholing during the holidays. And if you found this helpful, please share with others.
Which 2026 priority feels most urgent for your team?
My next newsletter drops January 8. The AI is always ready to go, but the human needs a holiday break. 😉
Published on 2024-07-25 10:00
You hear it all the time: AI makes work faster. But in my experience, strategic and creative work with AI takes longer now. And that’s exactly why the results are better.
Before AI, I’d have an idea, run a few Google searches, maybe brainstorm with a friend, and go. Now my conversations are longer, richer, and go in directions I never expected.
I use multiple AIs like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini. I brainstorm with each of them. I copy what one says into another to get a different take, then bring that response back. We go back and forth until the ideas start to come together or until I’ve heard enough to make a call.
Each turn teaches me something new:
Paths I hadn’t considered
Gaps in my thinking
Assumptions worth testing
“What if?” questions to explore
It’s like being a curious kid who keeps asking “why?” and actually gets real answers every time.
For quick tactical decisions, moving fast often makes sense. But for strategic work, the journey matters as much as where you end up. The detours, the surprises, the perspectives I pick up along the way. All of that makes the final thinking stronger.
Of course there’s a risk. You can over-think, go down too many rabbit holes, or never feel ready to decide. That’s where the human comes in. I have to know when it’s time to stop exploring and start choosing.
This is also why I’m excited about how AI tools are getting better at handling long conversations. Think of it like packing for a trip. Your AI can only carry so much in its suitcase (context window) before it runs out of room. The old solution was to stop and start a new conversation, basically throwing out everything and beginning again. But now these tools are learning to pack smarter.
Claude and ChatGPT are using the equivalent of compression bags (conversation compacting), squeezing down earlier parts of the conversation to make room for more. Gemini’s approach? Just bring a bigger suitcase. Either way, I can keep a rich conversation going instead of losing all that context.
Most people ask one question and move on. But the ones who keep asking “why?”, challenging assumptions, and pressure-testing ideas from different angles are doing the most interesting work.
If you want to go deeper on using AI as a thinking partner, I wrote about a three-level approach to critical thinking. See link in the comments.
Instead of: “How do we reduce churn?”
Try: “What if churn isn’t the problem? What if it’s showing us a product gap?”
Why it works: You pause before fixing and ask if you’re solving the right thing.
Potential outcome: A SaaS team discovers churned customers outgrew their product. Churn becomes upsell opportunities.
Instead of: “How do we improve trial conversion?”
Try: “How do language learning apps keep people engaged daily?”
Why it works: You find new ideas by studying how others solve similar problems in different contexts.
Potential Outcome: A product team adds streaks and milestones to help users reach activation faster.
Instead of: “How do we shorten the sales cycle?”
Try: “What if making it longer helped us close bigger deals?”
Why it works: Sometimes the thing you’re trying to optimize is the thing getting in your way.
Potential Outcome: A B2B company adds business audit step, helping them close higher-ACV customers.
Instead of: “How do we improve pricing?”
Try: “What patterns show up when we compare churn reasons to our competitors’ ads?”
Why it works: Some of your best insights live in unlinked data.
Potential Outcome: A team repositions after discovering churned users match competitor’s target audience.
Instead of: “How do we drive more revenue?”
Try: “What’s one sentence in our demo that changes how people see the product?”
Why it works: Small shifts often create the biggest results.
Potential Outcome: A team moves their outcome statement to demo opening for better conversion.
Instead of: “How do we raise prices?”
Try: “Who are we unintentionally leaving out?”
Why it works: You expand opportunity by seeing who’s missing.
Potential Outcome: An analytics platform creates startup tier, opening new market segment.
Instead of: “How do we improve email performance?”
Try: “What if we brought back personal touches using today’s tools?”
Why it works: Some tactics work no matter the decade.
Potential Outcome: A team adds timely check-ins and thank-yous based on user behavior.
Rhiannon Naslund, Chief Marketing Officer at Origami Risk is driving this shift in thinking and evolution in her team.
“This kind of shift in thinking doesn’t come naturally to everyone. That’s why we’re focused on giving people the space to learn and build confidence.
We’re showing what it looks like to guide AI with deeper thinking, using real examples that connect to their role. When someone sees how the way they structure a question changes what AI gives back, like refining messaging for a healthcare risk manager or pressure-testing a new idea, it clicks. They start to see how much impact they can have by pushing AI to think differently.”
Whether you think you’ve mastered AI or you’re still struggling with it, you’re probably operating at 20% of what’s possible.
The biggest AI advantage doesn’t come from better tools or prompts. It comes from questioning what everyone else takes for granted.
This becomes critical as we move toward AI agents that work autonomously. Teams that can’t think strategically with AI now won’t be able to build agents that think strategically later.
Erin Mills, CMO of Quorum and co-host of FutureCraft GTM Podcast, sees this connection clearly as someone building both AI strategies and autonomous systems.
“Organizations with strong fundamentals in strategic AI use are better positioned for what comes next. If your team struggles to frame the right problems or identify blind spots in their current approach, those same gaps will show up when you try to build AI agents that operate independently.
In our FutureCraft GTM conversations, we’re seeing a shift toward systems that make decisions on their own. What matters most now is having the judgment to guide them well. The teams that master strategic questioning now will be the ones successfully deploying autonomous AI later.”
Pick one challenge your team is working on this week. Before jumping into solutions, ask: “What assumptions are we making that might not be true?”
Then reframe it using one of the seven thinking moves above.
Want your team to think deeper? Forward this newsletter. The shift from good prompting to strategic thinking separates the winners from the optimizers.