Most organizations don’t lose because they lack smart people or modern tools. They lose because decisions, handoffs, and alignment cost more than the work itself.
That statement used to sound dramatic. In 2026 it’s operational reality.
AI has quietly changed the economics of software and knowledge work. The cost of execution is collapsing; the cost of coordination is not. The bottleneck has moved. If your delivery model still assumes that work is expensive but coordination is cheap, you’ll feel it as friction everywhere: long lead times, endless prioritization debates, "agile theater," vendor ping-pong, and the recurring surprise that projects "slip" despite everyone being busy.
This is what I call the coordination shift.
What changed: execution got cheaper, latency got expensive
AI-augmented teams can now do in days what used to take weeks, sometimes months. The surprise is that many companies don’t actually get the benefit because the org still routes work through the same approval queues, role boundaries, and planning ceremonies. When execution speed increases, the penalty for slow coordination increases too. Slowness becomes an avoidable cost.
Meanwhile, 2026 is shaping up to be an environment where avoidable costs decide winners and losers. Trade tensions and tariff uncertainty are back in the conversation, which tends to freeze discretionary work and force a "core business first" posture. Macro forecasts still read as "resilient but fragile," with uncertainty as the headline variable - not a detail. In that climate, the organizations that can re-plan and re-deliver quickly will compound advantages; the rest will discover that risk management often meant decision paralysis.
Regulation raises the floor: AI and cyber become management problems
In Europe, 2026 is also the year when "we’ll deal with it later" stops working.
The EU AI Act becomes broadly applicable on 2 August 2026, with earlier milestones already in force (including AI literacy obligations and prohibited practices) and additional timelines for high-risk systems. At the same time, NIS2 has already moved from directive to national implementation work across member states, raising expectations for governance, accountability, and operational cybersecurity.
The practical implication is simple: AI adoption and security posture cannot be treated as side quests owned by a small specialist group. They intersect directly with how work is coordinated, how decisions are made, and how fast the organization can correct itself.
The core idea: compete on decision quality and decision speed
The coordination shift reframes "productivity." It’s not primarily about writing code faster. It’s about reducing the time from:
an intent > to a decision > to a shippable change > to measurable impact.
When that loop is tight, you can absorb shocks (tariffs, supplier disruptions, demand swings, regulatory changes) without stalling. When that loop is slow, even good strategy fails in execution because reality changes faster than the organization can respond.
This is why I wrote the 10× Coordination Shift essay.
What the 10× essay offers
The essay is a practical model for operating in a world where AI compresses execution time and exposes coordination waste. It’s written for leaders and builders (executives, architects, engineering leads, product leaders) - anyone who has felt that "alignment" has become the real tax.
You’ll get:
A clear explanation of why traditional structures (functional silos, heavy handoffs, planning-as-control) produce diminishing returns when AI accelerates execution.
A concrete operating model for smaller, higher-leverage units that can carry work end-to-end, with AI as a force multiplier rather than a bolt-on tool (see my Centaur Manifest for how in small-unit teams).
A language for diagnosing coordination failure modes (priority churn, excessive approval depth, ambiguous ownership, governance that arrives after the fact) and replacing them with fast feedback and explicit decision rights.
A path that works for small companies and large enterprises alike. Size changes the constraints; it doesn’t change the physics.
If you’re an enterprise leader: this is not another "transformation framework." It’s a way to stop bleeding time in places that don’t show up on a balance sheet until it’s too late.
Winners and losers in 2026
Winners won’t be the companies with the most AI tools. They’ll be the companies that redesign coordination so that AI speed actually reaches customers and operations.
Losers will be the organizations that respond to AI-era volatility by adding process, adding gates, and treating governance as paperwork rather than a control loop. In practice, they’ll ship slower, learn slower, and drift into irrelevance while feeling "busy" the entire time.
This aligns with the mainstream technology leadership narrative emerging for 2026: multi-agent systems, AI-native development platforms, and "geopatriation" pressures are converging into a world where orchestration, resilience, and speed of adaptation are strategic. (Gartner)
Why start now
Because capability compounds and coordination debt compounds faster.
If you start now, you can learn safely: pick a contained value stream, establish guardrails, build AI literacy, and evolve your operating model before volatility forces rushed decisions. If you wait until the pressure is existential, you will "adopt AI" the way many organizations did "agile": as theater layered onto the same underlying coordination bottlenecks.
Starting now doesn’t mean betting the company on automation. It means shortening learning cycles and modernizing how decisions flow.
A practical way to begin, without drama
Treat this as an operating-model upgrade, not an AI rollout.
Choose one workflow where latency hurts (customer onboarding, quoting, incident response, reporting, procurement interfaces, internal developer workflows). Tighten the loop: clarify ownership, reduce handoffs, instrument outcomes, and introduce AI where it collapses toil or expands insight. Then repeat.
The constraint you’re removing is not "lack of effort." It’s time lost between intent and impact.
Download the essay
If you want the full model and a sharper explanation of what "10×" really means in the coordination era: download the 10× Coordination Shift essay and read it as an operating manual for 2026.
// Mike