Happy Triple Threat Thursday!
Here’s one Signal to notice, one Spark to try, and one Shift to consider.
📡 Signal — What’s Changing
88% of companies use AI. Only one-third have turned it into a system.
McKinsey’s new State of AI 2025 report shows a familiar pattern. AI adoption is high. Real impact is low.
Here is the report:
👉 McKinsey. The State of AI in 2025
The study found that most organizations have AI tools in place. Very few have the systems that make those tools useful. AI sits in isolated pilots. Teams experiment without scale. Workflows never change. As a result, leaders get activity instead of improvement.
The hidden truth is simple. Companies do not have an AI problem. They have a workflow problem that AI only exposes.
Why it matters:
Tools create potential. Systems create performance. Until AI is part of the daily decisions that drive revenue, it does not matter what model you use or how advanced it is.
What to do this week:
Pick one revenue motion and ask your team where AI actually influences the work.
Look for the handoff points where insights die instead of moving decisions forward.
Track one number. AI assisted decisions this week.
If the number is small, the issue is not the tool. The issue is the system around it.
⚡ Spark — What to Try This Week
ChatGPT Apps and Connectors = A new operating layer for your company.
OpenAI released GPT 5.1 this week. It is faster and sharper, but the real story for CEOs is what sits around it. ChatGPT Business and Enterprise now support apps and connectors that let AI operate inside the workflows your teams already use.
Apps behave like small systems. Rough inputs become finished outputs. A deck. A process map. A strategy narrative. The interface updates in real time as teams think through a problem.
Connectors bring data from the tools your people rely on. Azure Boards. Basecamp. Zoho CRM. Google Drive. More coming soon. This means AI no longer sits outside the business. It sits inside the work.
The strategic takeaway:
This is your first practical path to consistent execution across marketing, sales, and operations. You do not need a transformation program. You simply need one workflow that becomes more stable, more predictable, and more standardized.
Why it matters:
Consistency increases because the system guides the work.
Execution quality improves because standards sit inside the workflow.
Decision speed rises because context and recommendations appear in one place.
The company becomes easier to run because work behaves the same way every day.
This is not another tool. It is a new layer of structure.
What to do this week:
Identify one area of the business that creates unnecessary variance. Marketing campaigns. Sales follow up. Hand offs. Weekly reporting.
Ask your team:
“Where could ChatGPT help us standardize this workflow?”Request a two week plan to convert one motion into a stable system.
Measure one outcome. Friction removed. Variance reduced. Speed improved.
You do not need to build anything yourself.
You only need to set the expectation that your company operates like it has a system.
See the product in action:
Here is the official demo showing how apps and connectors work and why this release creates new leverage for operators and leaders.
🔄 Shift — How to Rethink It
Default belief: Sales and marketing will always be a little chaotic.
New belief: Sales and marketing are only chaotic because they were never built like a system.
In most companies every major function runs on a system. Finance runs on one. Operations runs on one. HR runs on one. Sales and marketing often rely on a mix of people, vendors, and tools that have never been designed to work together.
I see this inside almost every client I work with. Sales has its own tools, cadences, and dashboards. Marketing has its own agencies, calendars, and contractors. Output happens. Activity happens. But none of it flows through a shared workflow. Everyone is busy. No one can articulate the structure behind the work.
The moment it clicked for me was a quarterly review where we opened six platforms to understand one campaign. Each platform explained part of the story. Five people owned a different piece. When I asked who owned the full system behind the work, the room went quiet. There was no system to own.
Sales and marketing are not unreliable by nature. They are unreliable because the company never gave them the operating model other departments take for granted.
Why it matters:
A business scales when work becomes predictable. If results depend on the individual instead of the process, performance becomes inconsistent and growth becomes fragile.
How to apply it this week:
Choose one sales or marketing motion. Pipeline review. Campaign planning. Lead handoff.
Map the real workflow. Not the ideal one. The one your team actually runs.
Identify the gaps. Missing standards. Missing ownership. Missing sequence.
Build the simplest version of a shared workflow and run it for thirty days. Improve the system, not the heroics.
The parts of your business that scale are the parts you built systems for. Sales and marketing deserve the same treatment.
Thanks for reading Triple Threat. See you next Thursday with another Signal, Spark, and Shift.
— Alexandria Ohlinger
p.s. If this helped you think sharper or move faster, share it with someone who builds the way you do. And if you want more practical insight between issues, connect with me on LinkedIn.