Over the next five years, the gap between companies that integrate AI and those that merely experiment with it will spell the difference between survival and extinction. The companies who are willing to embrace change, fundamentally shift mindsets, and adapt at lightning speed will dominate.
When I think about the future of business in the AI Age, I can’t help but return to a story from 66 million years ago. When an asteroid the size of Manhattan struck the Yucatán Peninsula with the energy of ten billion Hiroshima bombs. Massive clouds of toxic dust blotted out the sun, cooled the planet, and generated torrents of acid rain.
The asteroid wiped out 75% of Earth’s species including the ammonite—a once-dominant marine creature. Its rigid shell, perfected over millennia, became its downfall. It couldn’t adapt to sudden change.
The octopus, however, thrived. With its soft body, distributed intelligence, and uncanny ability to adapt, it became one of evolution’s greatest survivors.
That ancient drama offers a powerful metaphor for leaders today. Too many organizations have hardened into ammonites: rigid hierarchies built for predictable environments. But AI isn’t a gentle tide—it’s an asteroid-level disruption. The structures that once made us strong are the very ones that could ensure our obsolescence.
That’s why Stephen Wunker and I wrote AI and the Octopus: Building the Super-Intelligent Organization (coming this fall). It’s a call to action for leaders everywhere to rethink how organizations are structured, how decisions are made, and how humans and AI can collaborate to create resilience, agility, and exponential growth.
Why Leaders Must Think Differently About AI
The conversation around AI often gets stuck on the wrong question: When will machines surpass humans? That’s not the point. Humanity’s power has always come from our ability to collaborate—across distances, across centuries, across differences.
AI’s true promise isn’t replacing us. It’s amplifying our ability to coordinate at scale. Imagine a network where every employee, every partner, and every AI agent can access the right information in real time, act with context, and experiment without fear. That’s not science fiction—it’s the Octopus Organization™.
Over the next five years, the gap between firms that adopt AI holistically and those that dabble at the edges will be the gap between survival and extinction.
The Octopus Organization™: A Blueprint for AI Transformation
We use the octopus as a model because it embodies the traits organizations need to master in this new era:
- Eight Arms – Push everyday decisions to the edge, equipping frontline teams with AI-powered judgment and freeing leaders to focus on bold moves.
- Neural Necklace – Break silos with seamless, AI-driven communication networks that keep the whole system aligned.
- Three Hearts – Balance three modes of leadership: analytical (pause and assess), agile (move fast), and aligned (keep culture and purpose strong).
- Adaptation Champion – Like the octopus rewriting its RNA, build resilience into your core systems so you can adjust before disruption hits.
This isn’t theory. We’ve studied organizations already moving in this direction, guided dozens of transformations, and drawn on over a million workforce surveys. What we found is clear: success comes not from simply automating tasks, but from reimagining how organizations function at every level.
What This Means for Leaders and Organizational Change
If you’re a CEO, a board member, or even a manager shaping a single team, the lesson is the same: adaptability beats efficiency. The leaders of the future will be those who:
- Redesign their organizations around adaptability, not control
- Use AI to free humans for higher-value judgment, creativity, and empathy
- Cultivate cultures that see uncertainty not as a threat but as an opportunity
As Peter Drucker warned, “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence—it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”
AI creates “yes” rather than limitations. It requires however, a fundamental cultural and mindset shift—from hierarchy to network, from rigidity to fluidity, from product-centric to data-driven.
Octopus organizations that distribute authority, embed AI intelligence at the edges, and cultivate a culture that rewards rapid learning and customer-centric adaptation, will become the undisputed leaders of tomorrow.
The tide has already turned. The only question is whether your organization will cling to its shell—or evolve into something far more resilient, intelligent, and alive.
AI and the Octopus: Building the Super-Intelligent Organization will be released this fall. Sign up for updates to be the first to know when the book is ready for preorder and available.
