I've just met a CEO whose competitors should be worried
She didn't have a bigger budget or a better team. She had something most leaders think they already have.
I sat across from a CEO last week who is going to destroy her competitors. I don’t say that lightly, and I’m not being dramatic. But by the end of our conversation I was absolutely certain: this business is about to pull so far ahead that the gap will be very difficult to close.
She doesn’t run a tech company. She runs a service business. She doesn’t have a massive AI budget or a team of data scientists. What she has is something far more valuable and far more rare.
She’s genuinely AI fluent.
And I need to explain what I mean by that, because a lot of leaders think they already are too.
She wasn’t just using AI. She was thinking differently because of it.
Most of the leaders I meet have used ChatGPT. Many use Claude or Gemini. Some have built workflows and automations. They’re not beginners and they’re not resistant. They’re engaged.
But this CEO was operating on a completely different level. Not because she’s more technical. She isn’t. Because she’s done something most leaders haven’t: she committed to building genuine AI fluency, and it changed how she sees her entire business.
There was a moment, she told me, where everything shifted. She’d been learning steadily: reading, experimenting, going deeper. And then it clicked. Not a single insight, but a cascading realisation that AI didn’t just belong in her toolkit. It belonged in her strategy. Her actual strategy. The one that determines where the business goes, how it competes, and what it becomes.
She redefined the whole thing.
When I spoke to her, she was systematically working through every part of the business asking: what can be automated? What can be done faster, better, or in a way that wasn’t possible before? Where are the opportunities we’ve been walking past? She wasn’t just optimising. She was reimagining.
And she’s putting real money behind it. Not recklessly. Deliberately. Because she can see something that most of her competitors can’t see yet: there is a window of opportunity right now to pull far ahead. Most businesses in her sector are still dabbling. Still treating AI as something to experiment with on the side. Still delegating it to someone in the team. While they’re doing that, she’s building a strategic advantage that will be extremely hard to replicate once they finally realise what’s happened.
That window won’t stay open forever. And every month it narrows a little more.
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What made her different from every other leader I’ve met
Here’s what struck me most: She stayed curious. And humble.
That sounds simple, but it’s not. Because the AI learning curve is brutally steep. You go from knowing almost nothing to learning an enormous amount in a very short space of time. And that rapid progress creates a feeling of confidence that is, quite frankly, dangerous.
I’ve seen this with a lot of leaders. Brilliant, capable people who’ve climbed a very steep learning curve and understandably feel like they’ve made serious progress. And they have. But the mountain is much taller than it looks from the foothills. I’ve caught myself doing it too - that moment where you think you’ve got a handle on things, and then you realise you’ve barely started.
It’s the Dunning-Kruger effect in its purest form. A little knowledge breeds disproportionate confidence. And in AI, that false confidence is arguably more damaging than ignorance, because it stops you from going further. You settle. You think you know enough. You don’t.
This CEO didn’t do that. She didn’t stop at the point where it felt comfortable. She kept pushing. She kept asking questions. She kept learning. Not just the tools, but the concepts, the risks, the ethics, the macro context, the things that most people skip because they don’t feel immediately practical. And that deeper understanding is exactly what allowed her to see opportunities that other leaders in her sector are completely blind to.
She didn’t let the early confidence trick her into thinking she’d arrived. And that single quality - staying genuinely curious when everything around you is telling you that you already know enough - is what separates her from her peers.
This isn’t about one exceptional person
She is exceptional. No question. But a lot of leaders are exceptional. Intelligence, drive, strategic instinct - these aren’t in short supply at the top of organisations. The leaders I work with are typically smart, capable people who care about getting this right.
The difference isn’t ability. It’s commitment.
Most leaders have committed to using AI. Very few have committed to understanding it at the level that actually changes how they lead. And there is an enormous gap between those two things.
Using AI makes you more efficient. Understanding AI makes you more strategic. Using AI helps you do your existing job faster. Understanding AI helps you see that your existing job might need to change entirely.
Leaders who build genuine AI fluency:
Redefine their strategy around what AI makes possible, not just what it makes faster
Spot risks earlier because they understand how AI systems actually work and where they fail
See opportunities their competitors are completely blind to
Make faster, more confident decisions without deferring to the most technical voice in the room
Invest deliberately because they can see the window of competitive advantage - and know it won’t stay open forever
Stay curious instead of settling at the point where early confidence tells them they know enough
That’s what happened to this CEO. She didn’t just get better at the things she was already doing. She started doing different things. Better things. Things her competitors haven’t even considered yet.
And the only reason she got there is because she invested in building genuine fluency - not just tool-level skills, but the judgement, context, and self-awareness that allow you to lead in a world that’s shifting underneath you.
You can build these skills systematically as a member of the AI Edit for £20 a month (increasing to £30 in April so sign up soon to lock in that pricing): curated AI content delivered LIVE every week.
Building that fluency deliberately
If you’re reading this and thinking, “I should probably go deeper” - you’re right. And the honest truth is that it won’t happen by accident. It won’t happen from casual use of ChatGPT. It won’t happen from reading the odd article or sitting through a conference keynote. It happens when you decide to build it deliberately.
Building AI fluency as a leader means developing:
A working understanding of core AI concepts - how models learn, why they hallucinate, what RAG and agents actually are
Hands-on familiarity with the leading AI tools
Macro context - connecting what’s happening in the wider AI landscape to your business decisions
Awareness of the ethical dimensions: accountability, data privacy, transparency, and environmental impact
Industry-specific insight into how AI is reshaping your sector, your competitors, and your customers
Self-awareness about cognitive biases - especially the overconfidence that comes from a steep learning curve
For leaders who want to get started building AI fluency, I have just launched the AI Masterclass for Leaders. Not to teach you which buttons to press. Not to turn you into a prompt engineer. To start to build the kind of understanding and thinking that changes how you see your business, your strategy, and your competitive position. The kind of fluency that CEO had. It’s short, it’s practical, it’s updated monthly, and it costs less than a business lunch.
The window is open. What are you waiting for?
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