Predicting where AI will take your organisation is almost impossible. But preparing for it isn’t. This idea anchored a dynamic masterclass at the AGSM 2025 Professional Forum, led by Professor George Shinkle and Minnie Singh-Murphy.
This year’s AGSM Professional Forum masterclass opened with a frank reminder: AI is advancing fast – and many organisations are not ready.
Quoting Bill Gates, Professor George Shinkle said “AI is the first technology that has no limits. This isn’t a once-and-done change process – we’re looking at continuous transformation.”
To illustrate the point, he shared projections showing that by 2027, AI could perform the work of an AI research engineer – with many models already reaching expert-level performance by late 2024.
“As AI systems help develop more advanced AI,” continued Shinkle, “we may see breakthroughs in artificial general intelligence (AGI) and even artificial superintelligence (ASI) – capabilities that could outperform humans at most tasks.”
Yet despite this acceleration, most leaders in the room admitted their organisations were not moving fast enough to keep pace.
That’s where Minnie Singh-Murphy offered a challenge. As AGSM Nexus Fellow and Academic Lead for AGSM’s new MBA course on AI Strategy, she urged leaders to look beyond today’s hype cycles and instead, ask more searching questions: If there’s even a 10% likelihood of reaching AGI by 2027, are the strategies within your organisation even close to ready? If not – what would you do differently now?
When facing uncertainty, some businesses freeze. But inaction can be the riskiest choice of all.
Shinkle explained this idea through a parable from the African savannah.
“Every morning, a gazelle wakes up knowing it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning, a lion wakes up knowing it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve.
“Whether you want to be the lion or the gazelle, you’d better be running.”
He also warned that many organisations often get caught up in the hype and expect fast results, but lose interest when transformation takes time. They then abandon or scale back their efforts – only to realise later that the real shift was just beginning and they should have stayed the course.
The lesson? “Change is accelerating exponentially. Once you and your competitors step into this space, you have to embrace the pace of evolution – or risk being left behind.”
To effectively meet this challenge, Singh-Murphy urged leaders to stop betting on precise forecasts and focus instead on building ‘strategy resilience’: robust choices that will serve them well no matter how the future unfolds.
To help participants move from theory to action, they introduced participants to a collaborative exercise designed to stretch thinking beyond short-term plans.
The task? To imagine how their organisations might respond in three plausible futures:
Against this backdrop of uncertainty, Singh-Murphy posed a grounding question: What are the no-regret strategic choices that will serve you well in any of these futures?
To guide this thinking, participants received a 3x3 framework – co-created with ChatGPT – for building AI strategies that are resilient, adaptive and fit for purpose:
To close, Singh-Murphy introduced the MELD acronym – a simple reminder of what modern leaders need to embed:
“This isn’t about having all the answers,” she reminded the group. “It’s about building a system that can keep learning.”
Shinkle echoed this idea, noting that traditional strategy cycles – like annual reviews and three-year plans – are no longer enough.
“We’re entering a world where strategy must be continuous,” he said. “AI can help you do that, but only if you build the capabilities and culture to use it wisely.”
By the end of the session, one thing was clear. While AI strategy can feel overwhelming, it also offers an extraordinary opportunity to shape the future.
The path forward isn’t about waiting for certainty. It’s about creating the conditions to thrive in flux – and being bold enough to lead the way.