Thought Piece: The three brains of modern business

Hi there,

I've watched companies pour millions into digital transformation only to see 70% of these initiatives fail. Why? They're approaching it backward.

Let me share a new way to think about transformation - what I call "The Three Brains of Modern Business."

Human brains evolved in layers, not replacements

Your organization works the same way:

1. People: your institutional knowledge and decision-making

2. Software & Data: your systems that remember, structure, and process information

3. Intelligence: the layer that learns, reasons, and evolves

Most transformation efforts try forcing people to adapt to rigid software. Next-gen transformation flips this around: technology adapts to your people.

Your organization has unique knowledge that took years to build. That's your real competitive edge.

Look at Maersk. They built AI systems that learned from their most experienced navigators' routing decisions. They didn't replace the navigators - they spread their wisdom across the fleet. Fuel consumption dropped 15%. Safety improved dramatically.

Ask yourself a basic question: Do you really know how many customers you have?

I asked this question at a Fortune 500 company and got three different answers from three different departments. Sales counted only paying accounts. Finance counted based on billing records. Executives looked only at manually created report PDFs.

When we helped one manufacturer clean up this mess, everything changed. Their AI started working properly. Customer service saw production issues in real-time. Sales spotted satisfaction patterns. Marketing targeted based on actual usage.

The third brain, Intelligence, adds reasoning to your organization

It spots patterns and adapts to new information in ways traditional software can't.

Smart companies build systems that connect their unique data and expertise with intelligence, creating capabilities competitors can't easily copy.

The magic happens when these three brains work as one system. Human expertise shapes Intelligence. Intelligence processes data to find insights. Those insights help your team make smarter decisions.

Each part makes the others stronger in a continuous loop.

If you want to deep dive into this model, my new book "100x: An Executive Brief for AI-Driven Business Results" unpacks exactly how to connect People, Software & Data, and Intelligence to achieve transformative ROI.

👉🏾 Grab one of the last 60 pre-sale copies for just $0.99 (instead of $25).

Get started without overthinking it

This approach is working right now across industries.

To begin:

1. Find your champion: you need one leader who is tenacious enough to start and to not stop

2. Start small: focus on quick wins that matter

3. Build connections: make sure each brain strengthens the others

4. Stay adaptable: your systems should evolve as technology changes

The winners won't be companies with the biggest tech budgets. They'll be organizations that successfully bring People, Software & Data, and Intelligence together as a unified whole.

Organizations where humans and machines play to their strengths will leave everyone else behind.

Ready to put these ideas into action? I've created the perfect resource to guide you 👇🏽

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Much Love,
Matt