Shooting Long Twos in an AI World

When the NBA introduced the three-point line in 1979, it looked cosmetic; a stripe to add a bit of late-game drama. Critics quickly dismissed it as a gimmick. Even respected coaches and veteran players voiced open skepticism. 

Yet the line quietly redrew the game. It stretched defenses, altered footwork, reshaped spacing, and began rewarding a new kind of player. Teams that adapted thrived. Those that didn’t, soon found themselves playing catch up.

Something similar is happening today with artificial intelligence. It’s tempting to dismiss AI as hype or a passing fad. But in many respects, AI is the business equivalent of the three-point line. And much like NBA teams in 1979, many companies have not recognized the seismic shifts underway; treating AI as an accessory, a feature to buy, rather than a redraw of the game. They add dashboards, automation, and engineers, yet continue to rely on playbooks written for yesterday’s game. The floor has changed. Their strategy has not.

The New Gravity

When a reliable shooter stands a few feet beyond that stripe, defenders follow. That pull, the threat from downtown, opens the lane, unlocks cuts, and turns ordinary passes into high-value plays. The value isn’t just the three points. It’s the space their presence creates for everyone else.

AI creates its own kind of pull. Place a capable machine-learning team next to product and ops, and they do more than automate tasks, they expand what’s possible for everyone else. A production engineer who cuts deployment time in half opens lanes for marketing to test faster and raises the bar on what customer support can deliver. A data engineer who creates live dashboards doesn’t just inform, they change the cadence of meetings, budgets, and debates.

The value isn’t the raw output alone. It’s the ripple. Yet many leaders miss the signal. They count the shots taken, projects finished, lines of code written; without noticing whether the new skill has stretched the floor for anyone else.

Give technical talent the room it needs to operate, and other roles suddenly have space to move. Keep them boxed into an "IT" corner, and everything collapses back into gridlock.

The Temptation of Volume

The three-point shot expanded the game, but it also tempted teams into taking shortcuts: shooting more without shooting better, simply because the math looked favorable. However, as analytics matured, the real lesson became clear: the breakthrough wasn’t volume, it was precision. Success came from generating high-quality looks from distance, then designing an offense to produce them consistently.

AI presents the same temptation. More dashboards, more models, more automations. The activity looks impressive, but nothing actually changes for the people on the other side of the code. The real test is this: does the tool make it faster and safer to place smart bets? If yes, you’ve reshaped the playing field. If not, you’ve added a layer of complexity without shifting the game.

The Steph Curry Lesson

Step Curry has become the face of the three-point shot. But the Golden State Warriors didn’t simply find a shooter; they built an ecosystem to amplify him: lineups, practice reps, analytics, and a thousand small design choices that turned space into advantage. Curry may have changed the sport; but the organization made his impact compounding.

The business corollary is obvious. A standout engineer can’t carry an organization if governance, finance, and compliance still behave like a pre-three-point-line league. Give that engineer authority at the edge, align incentives with speed and safety, and watch the whole team: sales, marketing, legal, et al., find new lanes of opportunity for scoring.

A New Playbook Pick a clear technical edge; speed, reliability, personalization, etc. Place technologists at the strategy table. Fund platforms, not one-off projects. Measure the plays that open options for others. Build practice into the culture; short, frequent learning loops.

Closing

The three-point line didn’t wait for slow adopters, and neither will AI. Keep running the same old plays if you want, but don’t be surprised when, one day, the scoreboard reminds you the game has already passed you by.

---

To learn more about how Living Systems Leadership can help you build a thriving organization, schedule a free call today.