Curiosity, AI and Building The Strategic Times: Why I Decided to Get Off the Sidelines and Tog Out

A few months ago, I was using AI as little more than a fancy Google search. I'd ask it the odd question, get it to summarise an article or help me draft an email, but that was about it. Useful? Absolutely. Transformational? Not really.

That changed when I started spending more time with it. The more I experimented, the more I realised I'd only been scratching the surface of what these tools can actually do. Since then, I haven't been able to stop thinking about where AI is going, particularly when it comes to how we work.

Eventually, I realised there was only one way I was going to understand it properly. I had to get off the sidelines and tog out.

Why I'm Curious About AI

I'll be upfront. I don't see AI as a threat. I know that's not a view everyone shares. Every week there seems to be another headline predicting jobs disappearing or entire professions becoming obsolete. Maybe some of that will happen.

Technology has always changed the way we work. People probably had the same conversations when computers first arrived in offices, and again when the internet transformed business. Both changed jobs forever, but they also created opportunities nobody could have predicted. I think AI will be similar.

Will some roles disappear? Almost certainly. But I suspect many more will evolve. The repetitive parts of our jobs will become easier to automate. The parts that rely on judgement, commercial thinking, creativity, communication, trust and relationships will become even more valuable. That's where I think the opportunity lies.

When I look at my own role, a surprising amount of time can disappear into repetitive tasks. Pulling data together, formatting spreadsheets, researching information, preparing first drafts and searching through documents. None of those tasks are where the real value is created.

The value comes from interpreting the information, making commercial decisions, challenging assumptions and helping people make better choices. It comes from building relationships, earning trust and giving people confidence that you'll deliver on what you've promised.

At the end of the day, people do business with people. Whether you're negotiating a deal, presenting a pricing strategy, winning a client or leading a team, trust still matters. Relationships still matter. Communication still matters.

AI can help us analyse the numbers, prepare the first draft and automate repetitive tasks, but it can't replace genuine human connection. If anything, I think those skills become even more valuable as AI becomes more capable. If AI can take care of more of the repetitive work, it gives me more time to focus on the work that really matters. That's a journey I'm looking forward to exploring.

Building It Into My Own Work

Over the last few months, I've been looking at how AI can become part of my day-to-day workflow at Cpl. In pricing and commercial strategy, a lot of the work involves gathering information, analysing data, building models and pulling together recommendations. AI isn't replacing the thinking, but it is helping remove some of the manual effort, giving me more time to focus on the commercial decisions rather than the administration around them.

The more I used it, the more curious I became about what else it could do.

Building Something Instead of Reading About It

The idea for The Strategic Times actually came from a conversation with my friend Colm. We'd been chatting about AI, where it was heading and what it might mean for the way we work. I came away from that conversation thinking it was all well and good reading articles and listening to podcasts about AI, but I wasn't really learning unless I actually started using it.

So I decided to build something that would be useful to me, both professionally and personally. A website felt like the right place to start.

The idea itself was simple. I wanted one place where I could collect the articles, insights and resources I regularly use in my day job instead of having them scattered across bookmarks, emails and browser tabs. If I could build something genuinely useful while learning more about AI at the same time, even better.

I had absolutely no background in web development. Over a few evenings, using Claude as my guide, I built the website. It certainly wasn't as simple as typing "build me a website" and watching it appear. There were plenty of moments where things broke, where one fix created another problem, or where I had to stop and understand a concept I'd never come across before.

Without really planning to, I found myself learning about APIs, databases through Supabase, deployment with Vercel, GitHub, domain management, hosting and Google Search Console. Now I have a much better understanding of what those tools do and, more importantly, how they fit together.

One thing the process definitely gave me was a greater appreciation for software developers. Before this, I'd have assumed building a website was simply a matter of writing some code. It's obviously far more than that.

Claude wrote the vast majority of the code, but I still found myself constantly making decisions, testing ideas, refining what I wanted and learning enough about each step to keep the project moving forward.

More than anything, it showed me just how accessible AI can make learning. A few weeks earlier, I wouldn't have considered attempting something like this. Now I have a working website, a much better understanding of what sits behind it and a genuine excitement about what else might be possible.

What's Next for The Strategic Times

The website is only the beginning. One of the reasons I wanted to create it was to have a place where I could organise the information I use every day. The other was to have somewhere to write.

Going forward, I'll be writing about the things I'm genuinely interested in and fortunate enough to work on every day. That means sharing practical experiences from pricing, deal structuring, commercial operations, sales operations, economic modelling, negotiations, procurement, process improvement and the commercial decisions that sit behind growing organisations.

I'll also be exploring ideas from strategic management that I've always found fascinating. Concepts like the Resource-Based View, Dynamic Capabilities, make-versus-buy decisions, value-based pricing, cost-plus pricing, transaction cost economics, pricing psychology, competitive advantage, organisational capability and economies of scale are often discussed in theory. I'm interested in where those ideas meet the real world and what they actually look like in practice.

Sport will feature too. I've always believed there's a huge overlap between business and sport. Whether it's leadership, culture, performance, governance, decision-making or building successful teams, many of the same principles apply. Having spent time in both worlds, I think there's plenty each can learn from the other.

Ultimately, that's what The Strategic Times is about. It's a place to explore the crossover between commercial strategy, strategic management, technology, sport and the real-world experiences that shape how organisations grow, compete and make better decisions.

I'm still very much learning. This certainly won't be the last time AI appears in my work or on this website. If anything, I think I'm only scratching the surface of what's possible.

But if there's one thing this experience has taught me, it's that the best way to understand new technology isn't to stand on the sidelines talking about it. It's to start using it, experimenting with it and building with it.

For me, it was time to get off the sidelines and tog out.

Curiosity got me started. AI simply gave me a new way to explore it.

Blog by Padraig O'Donnell