What CEOs Need to Know About AI-Driven Growth
In 2011, Ken Jennings, the then-undefeated Jeopardy! champion, lost his first match to IBM’s artificial intelligence, Watson. After the win, IBM brought Watson to market. However, it cost millions of dollars to implement and required specialists to use it.
That changed when OpenAI democratized access to artificial intelligence with ChatGPT in 2022. In just a few years, AI went from something only a few enterprise businesses could use to a tool that will be part of the fabric of every company moving forward.
You’ve already heard a lot about AI, but are you making the most of its potential? As CEO, you have to own the strategy and the vision. This gets all the more difficult when the space is constantly changing.
At CEO Coaching International’s 2025 Make BIG Happen Summit, we invited Patrick Patterson, CEO of Level Agency, to talk about the creative possibilities with AI. He teamed up with ex-Chief Data Officer Sol Rashidi, who has scaled up AI processes for businesses like Merck, Estee Lauder, and Amazon, to walk our attendees through operationalizing AI at scale and how to make it work for their business.
Today, we’re recapping their incredible double-header session so you can deep dive into AI.
The Hype is Real…But You Still Need Human Intervention
Everyone is excited about what AI can do. “Even your grandmother’s talking about AI, right?” said Patterson. “What’s really amazing is that years from now, we’re going to look back at this and it’s all going to feel antiquated. AI will never be worse than it is today, and you need to be prepared for what’s next.”
Right now, that means resisting the temptation to remove humans from the equation entirely. Said Patterson, “We shouldn’t think about these tools as replacements for people. What they do is enable the process. AI makes it easier for everything from onboarding to research to creative execution, measurement, and reporting. There has to be a human in this process for it to work.”
What’s really amazing is that years from now, we’re going to look back at this and it’s all going to feel antiquated. AI will never be worse than it is today, and you need to be prepared for what’s next.
—Patrick Patterson
Patterson recommends thinking about AI as part of a spectrum of automation:
- Automation: This is a pure technology-driven workflow. For example, you can automate sending a calendar reminder every weekday at the same time.
- Automation + AI: This takes care of more sophisticated workflows, where you deploy AI to try to help you do the task. An example of this would be using automation and AI together to schedule a meeting and take notes on that meeting.
- AI Agent: An AI agent autonomously takes a task for you and completes it. An example would be using AI to conduct deep research on every calendar meeting you’ve ever had to detect patterns and offer recommendations on where you can reduce the number of meetings.
Thinking about AI as a tool for you to achieve your goals, rather than a bulldozer for productivity, is what will set you up for success. “I get asked all the time, ‘What’s your AI strategy?’ but you would never ask me about your electricity strategy, or a computer strategy. The question to ask is, ‘What’s my strategy, and how can AI enable it?” said Patterson.
Use AI to Help You Think Deeper
Our experts agreed that using AI to replace your critical thinking skills won’t work. What you need instead is to use it as a way to evaluate all of the possible solutions to a problem and think BIGGER.
For example, you could:
- Give AI your detailed persona documentation. Use it to create AI “users” that will give you direct feedback on strategy, advertising copy, and more, so you can overcome bias and stay customer-centric with an immediate feedback loop.
- Take the pre-read from your next board meeting. Ask AI to give you board-level feedback on your ideas. Then, present both to the board so you can get past what’s obvious and be more innovative.
- Teach AI your sales training. Then, use it to craft cold emails and other sales enablement tools to get them up to speed. That way, you can spend 1:1 coaching and roleplaying time with your sales team instead of making them watch a thousand videos.
What’s exciting is that this list is unlimited. The more you train AI about your business, the more options you’ll have to create powerful shortcuts that allow you (and your team) to get your work done more efficiently and with more information than ever before.
The Only Way to Succeed is to Fail
We’re at the beginning of what AI can do. That’s exciting, but it’s also scary.
“To build an organization that truly leverages artificial intelligence will give you a huge competitive advantage, but it’s going to take some effort. You’re going to have to experiment, and you’re going to have to be okay with failing a few times,” said Rashidi.
Rashidi likens this era of artificial intelligence to the beginning of the startup boom in the 2010s. You often hear about unicorns with $20 billion evaluations and incredible exits, but how often do you hear about the ones that fold after six months?
Never. That’s what’s happening now in AI.
“Don’t feel like you need to know all of the answers right now,” said Rashidi. “We’re getting whiplash from how much innovation is going on. What you can do is start, even if it’s tinkering, because if you want your business to thrive and survive, you need to try. Every single industry will be impacted by this.”
Implementing AI is a People Problem, Not a Technology Problem
“We think it’s about the tech, but it’s actually about your people,” said Rashidi. “Are you making them better? Are you fundamentally leveraging the talent that you brought them in for? Are you supercharging them and accelerating the work that they do?”
It’s (relatively) easy to purchase an AI tool of your choice—Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT—and deploy it across your organization. What’s harder? Adoption.
This is a change management problem that starts with you. If you’re not comfortable with AI, and if you’re not using it for your daily workload, then you can’t expect your team to do so, either. That means the only way it’s going to happen is if you make it a strategic priority.
We think it’s about the tech, but it’s actually about your people. Are you making them better? Are you fundamentally leveraging the talent that you brought them in for? Are you supercharging them and accelerating the work that they do?
— Sol Rashidi
“AI gets added into a beautiful presentation to the board, but if nothing else drops from your strategic priorities, there’s no way it will get done,” said Rashidi. “Your folks already have enough to work on. This is a brand new skill that your organization has to learn. So if you really want to harness it, you have to make it a priority.”
It can seem overwhelming, but you have a BIG advantage: Your people. You know their skill sets and what they need to thrive. The winners in AI will be the ones who pay attention to their people just as much as their technology.
Get an Expert’s Perspective with AI Coaching
AI presents a whole new set of challenges for your organization. If you’re stuck trying to answer AI-related questions like:
- How can I use AI to boost productivity on my team?
- How can I get my team to adopt AI in the first place?
- What’s smoke and mirrors and what’s real in terms of using AI in the workplace?
We’re here to help.
If you have a gap between your AI ambitions and your AI strategy, it may be time to bring in an expert. Implementing AI requires coordination from your entire organization, including an outside perspective on what that strategy looks like and a plan to get it done that enables BIG growth could be just what you need.
Whether they’re facilitating your AI strategy planning session or holding you accountable if you start to miss your numbers, a coach who’s been there and done that has the experience and the outside perspective you need to stick to the system, maintain momentum, and keep Making BIG Happen. See how we can help you capitalize on AI for your business strategy >
About CEO Coaching International
CEO Coaching International works with CEOs and their leadership teams to achieve extraordinary results quarter after quarter, year after year. Known globally for its success in coaching growth-focused entrepreneurs to meaningful exits, the firm has coached more than 1,500+ CEOs and entrepreneurs across 100+ industries and 60 countries. Its coaches—former CEOs, presidents, and executives—have led businesses ranging from startups to over $10 billion, driving double-digit sales and profit growth, many culminating in eight, nine, or ten-figure exits.
Companies that have worked with CEO Coaching International for two years or more have achieved an average revenue CAGR of 25.9%, nearly 3X the U.S. average, and an average EBITDA CAGR of 39.2%, more than 4X the national benchmark.
Discover how coaching can transform your leadership journey at ceocoachinginternational.com.
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