Like a lot of people, I watched some college football this weekend. As a Louisiana Tech fan, I had more fun than most as I got to watch the Bulldogs dominate in an 80–6 game.
But the weekend was also a reminder of how much college football has changed.
More than 10,500 players across NCAA divisions entered the transfer portal during the 15-day window in January. Oklahoma State lost 64 players and brought in 54. West Virginia made 78 roster moves. Several other major programs turned over nearly as many players.
Coaches once had years to develop players and pass along the program’s culture. Now they may have a few months to turn a group of talented strangers into a team.
CEOs face a similar challenge — not with free agents but with AI agents. Business leaders have suddenly gained access to an enormous amount of intelligence and capability. But like a transfer player, AI arrives knowing nothing about how your particular organization operates. In both cases, the challenge is getting new talent up to speed and producing results quickly.
The system has to be teachable
A coach cannot assume that new players understand how his program works. He has to make the important things explicit:
Strategy: What are we trying to do, and how do we expect to win?
Language: What do our terms and signals mean?
Standards: What does good performance look like here?
Responsibilities: Who owns what, and how do we work together?
The system also has to be distinctive. Any coach can hand a player a generic football manual. The useful material explains how this team plays football. That’s where the competitive advantage lies.
That is increasingly true for companies as well.
AI arrives without context
AI can analyze a market, pressure-test a strategy, prepare a meeting brief, model alternatives, draft communications, and help track execution. The CEO can now even do this stuff him- or herself (maybe while taking in a football game).
But the AI does not automatically understand how your company creates value, which customers matter most, what tradeoffs you are willing to make, how your executives divide responsibility, or why a decision that looks sensible on paper will never work inside your organization.
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Unless that knowledge has been clearly articulated and recorded, AI goes to work without it. The result may be polished, impressive—and totally useless. Asking a bunch of powerful agents to run hard in the wrong direction can in fact be a detriment.
Alignment starts with the CEO
AI researchers often talk about the alignment problem: how do we ensure that a powerful system pursues the goals we actually intend as a species? This is the societal discussion we are having now that can veer into scary territory.
But every CEO now faces a practical version of that problem inside the company.
AI becomes far more valuable when it can work from a documented operating system that includes:
the company’s strategy and model for creating value
its differentiated values and operating principles
its three-year objectives and quarterly goals
its decision rights, performance measures, and management rhythm
As I said before: More now than ever, this is where competitive advantage comes from. Your competitors can buy the same AI tools. They cannot copy the operating system you have built around your particular strategy, people, customers, and way of working.
The transfer portal rewards coaches who can quickly turn new talent into coordinated performance. AI will reward CEOs who can do the same.
Imagine that a brilliant stranger joins your company Monday morning. How quickly could you teach that person enough about the business to produce useful work?
Your answer is a good indication of how ready your company is for AI.