[Editor’s Note: Agents of Transformation is an independent GeekWire series, underwritten by Accenture, exploring the adoption and impact of AI and agents. See coverage of our related event.]
If someone showed up at your door with a saw and said “let’s walk through your house and figure out how to make it better,” you’d think you hired the wrong contractor. But that’s how most companies are approaching AI — focusing on the capabilities of the tool rather than their vision for the work.
That’s the case Brian Evergreen has been making for years, first as an AI leader at Microsoft, now as an author, strategist and advisor to Fortune 500 companies. In a recent live recording of the GeekWire Podcast, Evergreen laid out where companies should focus instead.
His core message is what he calls future solving: You need a vision for the future that you’re trying to create first, and then AI becomes a tool for getting there. Most companies have it backward. They start with the technology, and then they ask what to do with it.
“Use cases are the friend of engineering, but the enemy of strategy,” Evergreen said. “Instead of being AI first, you need to be value first.”
Evergreen’s career has included roles at Accenture, AWS, and Microsoft, where he worked in AI from 2016 to 2023. As the company’s U.S. AI strategy lead, he helped executives develop their technology plans, and saw firsthand that the standard playbook wasn’t working. They would start with a problem, pick a use case, go after low-hanging fruit, and ultimately fall short.
That experience led to his book, Autonomous Transformation, and to the advisory work he does now through his firm, The Future Solving Company. His core argument: companies don’t need a better AI strategy. They need a vision for where they’re going, and AI is one way to get there.
Here are more takeaways from the conversation:
Humans as the interface: Instead of putting AI in front of the customer, Evergreen argues companies should put humans there, with AI as middleware behind the scenes. He points to Klarna, which laid off 700 customer support workers and replaced them with AI, then scrambled to rebuild its human team.
Decouple tasks from jobs: A job is an accountability for an outcome, Evergreen said, and AI can’t hold that accountability. The better approach: separate tasks from jobs, hand the repetitive ones to AI, and let humans focus on judgment and relationships.
High agency matters at every level: Evergreen’s own career illustrates the point. He started at Accenture as a data entry contractor, taught himself SharePoint, automated much of his team’s workflow, and worked his way into a full-time consulting role. The lesson: don’t wait for permission.
Create new value, not cheaper operations: Most companies look at AI and ask how to do what they’re already doing faster, better, or cheaper. Evergreen says that misses the point. The bigger opportunity is creating new value that didn’t exist before, the way Netflix went from shipping DVDs to streaming.
The larger importance of a clear vision: “Vision is the only force with enough momentum to overcome organizational inertia,” Evergreen said. Without it, companies can’t have a real strategy. And without a strategy, they can’t make strategic decisions.
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