If AI feels like a bolt-on instead of a breakthrough, the problem isn’t strategy. It’s culture.
The companies winning in AI today aren’t just tech giants with big budgets. They’re mid-size industrial firms, healthcare startups, and retail operators who decided to embed AI into how people think, lead, and execute. Not as a project, but as a mindset.
Let’s look at what this actually means.
A few months ago, a $180M logistics company in the Midwest shifted from reactive planning to AI-assisted forecasting. They didn’t start with a massive investment. They started with a leadership conversation: what if every planning decision had 20 percent more foresight?
In healthcare, companies like BenchSci and Tempus are showing how AI-first thinking isn’t just about algorithms. It’s about equipping scientists, clinicians, and ops leaders with data-backed questions that uncover better outcomes.
In retail, Vuori didn’t need hundreds of data scientists to optimize inventory. They used lightweight machine learning tools and trained their planners to trust signals over instinct. Their stockouts dropped, margins increased, and their people felt empowered.
These stories have one thing in common: leaders weren’t waiting for AI to be ready. They focused on making their people ready.
Here’s how AI-first cultures operate differently:
1. They encourage questions like “Where can we 10x this?” instead of “What tools should we buy?”
2. They teach managers to lead with insight, not just instinct.
3. They normalize experimentation, not perfection.
4. They train people to ask smarter questions, not become data scientists.
If your organization is still treating AI like a tool to be handed to IT, you’re not late. You’re misaligned.
AI-first cultures unlock competitive advantage not through tech, but through mindset. A COO at a mid-size life sciences company I advised recently said it best: “AI didn’t change our workflows, it changed how we see opportunity.”
The future doesn’t belong to the companies with the most pilots. It belongs to those with the clearest decisions, the fastest learning loops, and the boldest cultural alignment.
Mahesh M. Thakur
AI & Leadership Advisor | CEO, Decisive AI
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maheshmthakur