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This week I’ve been reflecting on a simple but often overlooked question: What won’t change in five years? In the AI era, leaders obsess over what’s changing fastest: the new model, the new feature, the new competitor demo. But as Jeff Bezos discovered decades ago, the real advantage comes from building around what never changes.

Let’s break this into two parts: the rules customers never change, and the rules organizations never change. Together, they form ten principles you can use to cut through the noise and make AI work for you instead of the other way around.

Part I: What Customers Never Change

Rule 1: Speed Always Wins

No customer has ever said, “I wish this took longer.” From ordering dinner to getting a loan approved, speed is energy saved. Customers value their time as much as their money, often more. If you’re leading a team right now, this is the simplest place to apply AI: anywhere people wait.

AI that shortens call times, accelerates approvals, or cuts down onboarding friction will always win. The lesson is simple, don’t overcomplicate where to start. Ask yourself: “Where are my customers waiting?” Then point AI at that bottleneck. If your competitor is still debating which AI model to use, but you’ve already cut a five-day process to five hours, you’re ahead.

Rule 2: Lower Costs Always Win Loyalty

Customers don’t ask to pay more for the same thing. They’ll pay more if you add more value, but never just because you want them to. Money is stored energy, and conserving it is human nature.

AI should be used to strip waste, not just dress up products with new features. The winners in the next five years won’t be the companies charging premiums for AI, they’ll be the ones using AI to quietly lower costs, pass on savings, and build loyalty. Think Costco, not luxury add-ons. The question you should be asking is: “Where can AI cut 10% of my costs without cutting 1% of my value?”

Rule 3: Certainty Always Beats Risk

Customers lean toward what feels reliable and predictable. They avoid risk because managing uncertainty requires energy. If two products seem equal, they’ll choose the one that feels more certain, even if it’s slower or slightly more expensive.

This is where AI can shine or fail. An AI-powered system that makes errors erodes certainty faster than any human mistake. But an AI fraud filter that blocks scams, or a recommendation engine that feels consistently trustworthy, creates confidence that compounds. If you’re leading adoption, don’t ask, “How clever is this model?” Ask, “Does this make customers more certain they’ll get what they expect?”

Rule 4: Ease Always Outperforms Complexity

Ease of use wins. Always. No customer has ever said, “I wish this app had more steps.” Each extra click, confusing menu, or poorly worded message drains energy.

AI that simplifies, anticipates, and makes access seamless is aligned with this invariant. That means building systems that remove steps, not add them. If your AI rollout requires a tutorial or makes your product harder to use, you’ve already lost. The best test is simple: would your customer call this “easier” after the first try? If the answer is anything but yes, you’re off track.

Part II: What Organizations Never Change

If the first four rules describe the customer side of the equation, the next six explain why organizations succeed or fail when they try to meet those needs.

Rule 1: Compounding Always Beats Moonshots

Organizations grow stronger through steady, small improvements that build on each other. Flashy initiatives collapse when the demo ends; compounding improvements quietly build empires.

If you’re leading AI adoption, avoid the trap of the “AI transformation” with glossy press releases and consultant-driven centers of excellence. Instead, ask: “Where can AI make one process 10% better this month?” Over a year, that compounds into something game-changing. In five years, it separates leaders from laggards.

Rule 2: Resistance Is Inevitable

People resist change because it costs energy. Fear multiplies resistance: fear of looking incompetent, fear of being replaced, fear of the unknown. You won’t talk people out of fear. You have to design a change so dramatically easier that resistance becomes irrelevant.

A 30% improvement won’t cut it. You need 10x improvements that make the old way look absurd. If you’re introducing AI, aim for the kind of leap where people try it once and think, “Why would I ever go back?” Anything less gets buried in resistance.

Rule 3: Channels Dictate Flow

Every organization has invisible channels for information and decision-making. They’re not on the org chart, but everyone knows them. AI doesn’t create new channels; it accelerates the ones you already have.

If your organization’s communication is broken, AI makes it break faster. If trust and flow are healthy, AI strengthens them. That means the first strategic question isn’t “What AI should we implement?” It’s “Are our channels ready to handle more speed, more volume, more flow?” If the answer is no, fix the channels before you pour AI into them.

Rule 4: Tension Energizes, Conflict Paralyzes

Great organizations thrive on structural tension: a vivid picture of where they want to go, paired with brutal honesty about where they are now. That gap creates energy. Conflict, by contrast, drains energy.

AI is powerful because it makes ambitious futures more achievable. A 10x faster process, a 10x cheaper service, a 10x simpler product, those goals feel possible now. But if the vision is incompatible with the current system, you create conflict, not tension. If you’re a leader, your job is to set a clear future that pulls your team forward, not one that tears your system apart.

Rule 5: Strategic Friction Protects Trust

In an age where AI removes friction everywhere, the competitive advantage comes from adding it back—on purpose. Strategic friction protects trust, quality, and innovation.

That means designing checkpoints where slowing down matters: review layers that prevent harmful outputs, buffers that protect experiments from being killed too early, and standards that keep quality from collapsing. Amazon forces six-page memos instead of PowerPoints because friction drives clarity. Your job is to design the right friction, not accidentally create waste.

Rule 6: Middle Management Always Decides the Outcome

Executives craft the vision. Frontlines do the work. But middle managers translate one into the other. They are the transmission system. If they’re aligned, things move. If they resist, nothing moves.

AI threatens to automate the authority reports, approvals, and coordination that managers once controlled. But it can also make them more powerful if they use it to empower their teams, build trust, and translate strategy into practice. Get middle management involved early. Not as passive supporters, but as active designers. If they’re not driving adoption, they’re resisting it. And resistance in the middle breaks everything.

My Disruptive Take

These ten rules are not trends. They are physics. Customers will always want faster, cheaper, more certain, and easier. Organizations will always grow by compounding, resist by default, depend on their channels, thrive on tension, need friction in the right places, and live or die by their middle managers.

AI doesn’t change these laws; it magnifies them. The companies that win won’t be the ones with the most advanced AI model, but the ones that use AI to serve these principles better than anyone else. The question isn’t “How do we do AI?” It’s “How do we use AI to deliver 10x on what never changes?”

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Keep Disrupting,

Rob, CEO of Disruption Now & Chief Curator of MidwestCon