How To End The AI Product v. AI Strategy Confusion -- If You Want To End It

 

Early 2026 givens:

1. Your organization needs an AI strategy.

2. Your organization needs a cyberdefense strategy.

Late 2026 givens:

3. Your organization needs an AI cyberdefense strategy to secure your operations using AI.

4. Your organization needs a cyberdefense AI strategy to use AI securely.

Your organization will have all of these by early 2027, right? Right?

Quick, call your peers and ask them what they do!

I've sat in those meetings. You've sat in those meetings. Big Consulting Company is in the building. Your natural tendency is to buy whatever the vendor is selling you because it's new and shiny and your bosses like bright shiny objects. 

Look, we get it, Big Consulting Company has The Latest Ahead-Of-The-Curve AI product. It even was featured in Ivy League University Business Magazine.

Your company just bought a product. 

Sure, they said it was "consulting" or "advising" but being entirely candid it's a product. The difference is that a product is something you hook up, or patch in, or train people on. It needs maintenance. It becomes obsolete, and then you buy a new one.

Remember those four givens? You don't have them yet because you treat them like products. 

Let's discuss the psychology of this. Products cost money. Many times in organizations, only important people get to allocate resources (i.e. spend money). That is, buying a product means you're, well, important. 

A strategy is not a product.

Brendan advised you to be specific about what the AI strategy is for, which is excellent advice. Let's amplify this: You build a strategy. You cannot have a "strategic conversation" about something that is not a strategy. In reality you're having a product conversation until you sit down (or stand, you do you) and decide what you need to achieve, how, who owns what, how you will know it works, how different processes are interdependent, etc.

The strategy shifts in active anticipation of the balance between operations and security. That is the cybersecurity risk management process at the heart of those four givens.

And best of all, a strategy does not entail a purchase order. 

You don't need Big Consulting Company's strategy product. It's not bad, in fact it probably was good for its time, but until your leadership works with you or assigns you to build the strategy for something that creates a cyberdefense security culture in your organization, Big Consulting Company's product is premature for you. It's not Big Consulting Company's fault because it's not their job to have your strategic conversation.

Here is a leadership challenge for you. Think about this question for one minute, then take a full 5 minutes to answer it:

What would happen if your company's Chief AI Officer -- the CAIO -- ran your cybersecurity operations for one week?

This is on you. If you cannot meaningfully answer that question, then you need to call Big Consulting Company now to buy their latest product. Operators are standing by. 

Ask us how you can create the security culture and practices you need for the strategy you need.

(image credit: Julian Herzog, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)