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Compiling this newsletter is one of the most enjoyable things I do each week, not least because it lets me wander through wildly different sectors to figure out what’s changing – and why. Private equity is rethinking its entire playbook, AI adoption is sprinting ahead of the processes meant to contain it and even customer service now comes with hidden incentives no smart leader would design on purpose. The fun part is seeing they’re all symptoms of the same thing: the old systems are creaking, and the new ones are arriving faster than anyone planned. The only sensible response is to stay curious and keep moving.

Enjoy!

Why private equity is changing its M&A playbook

The Drum recently revealed that private equity is behaving slightly differently in the agency world, and one point in the article stood out far more than the league tables and regional breakdowns. PE firms are shifting from the classic “buy, grow, flip” cycle to something closer to permanent ownership in certain categories. Not because the businesses are booming, but because the market has changed: multiples are lower, exits are slower and there are fewer buyers at the top of the chain. It’s because every industry eventually reaches the point where scale makes agility harder, and where long-term cashflow becomes more attractive than the next big leap. Find out how investors are rewriting the rulebook here.

Join me at an essential masterclass for business owners

I’ve had a lot of conversations with founders who are “not ready to sell yet” – but the truth is, the companies that achieve the best outcomes are the ones that start behaving like sellable businesses long before they ever plan to exit. That’s what my upcoming masterclass is about. On 25 November, I’m breaking down the Exit Mode system I’ve used for decades: how to untangle yourself from day-to-day operations, how to structure the business for valuation rather than firefighting and how to position for buyers long before you’re in the market. If you want to give yourself more choices about what comes next, you can grab one of the 200 free seats here.

Everyone’s using AI. Almost nobody is ready for what comes next.

I took a look at Wharton’s new AI adoption report – now in its third year – and the shift is staggering. Three years ago, only a third of leaders used Gen AI weekly. Today it’s 82 per cent, with 46 per cent using it daily, and nearly three-quarters measuring ROI like any other investment. Budgets are rising, internal R&D now eats 30 per cent of many AI tech budgets, and four in five leaders expect meaningful returns within two to three years. What’s striking is how uneven all this progress is. Some teams are deep into daily use while others are still working out basic guardrails. Senior leaders say AI is paying off; managers closer to the work are far less certain. And despite all the investment, most companies haven’t rebuilt the processes that sit around the technology — how decisions move and how information flows. The tools have raced ahead. The organisations using them haven’t. That gap is where next year’s real competitive shake-out will happen. Read the report here.

Why customer-service AI is getting worse on purpose

Cory Doctorow has written a brilliant little piece on the strange economics of customer-service AI. His argument is that chatbots aren’t designed to help you – they’re designed to wear you down until you stop asking for help in the first place. He calls them “accountability sinks”, part of a long tradition of turning support into a cost-reduction exercise rather than a loyalty one. What makes the piece worth reading is the three stories he tells: two where the bot stonewalls him exactly as designed, and one where the bot accidentally leaks a private phone number just because he asked nicely. It’s a reminder that just because you can use AI for customer service, it doesn’t mean that you should. Get the story here.

When the CEO has to jump in the comments

Continuing the theme of customer service, Sonos has spent most of the year firefighting after a disastrous app redesign, and what’s interesting isn’t the software mess but how the new CEO, Tom Conrad, is dealing with it. He’s been replying to angry customers directly on Threads – no PR veneer, no defensive spin, just: “We’ve made some progress, but there’s a lot left to do. It sounds like we’re doing a particularly bad job in your home and I’d love to learn more.”

It’s a small thing on the surface, but it reveals something bigger. When a product breaks trust, the repair has to come from the top. You can’t outsource credibility to customer support scripts or a comms team. People want to believe the company understands what went wrong – and that someone senior cares enough to show up. Conrad isn’t fixing each individual complaint, but he’s doing something more important: signalling, publicly, that the relationship matters. Inc has the story.​

Why “showing your workings” is becoming a growth strategy

I came across a fascinating piece from Expedia’s Perla Bloom about why audiences are suddenly obsessed with the making of things – not just the finished product. She suggests that behind-the-scenes footage, studio diaries, drafts, demos and creative process have become part of the marketing and the story itself. It’s not about transparency for its own sake; it’s about giving people enough access to see the craft, which makes the final work land harder. It struck me how true this is for founders too: people don’t just buy the outcome, they buy the thinking, the discipline and the intent behind it. The ‘making of’ can sometimes be more persuasive than the launch. Read more about this trend here.

The AI mistake B2B companies are sleepwalking into

Forrester has a worrying prediction for 2026: ungoverned generative AI inside commercial tools will wipe out more than $10bn in enterprise value. Not because the models are getting worse, but because the guardrails aren’t keeping up. Tools ship new AI features every week; employees use them without understanding the risks; leadership assumes “AI inside the platform” means someone else is accountable. The real point here isn’t the number – it’s the structural blind spot. Leaders are still trying to govern third-party AI the way they govern internal systems. It doesn’t work. And the gap between those two worlds is where the next wave of reputational damage will come from. Get the executive summary here.

Why younger teams are pushing back on panic mode

The Washington Post ran an interesting piece about Gen Z refusing to panic over made-up workplace emergencies – the “it’s PR, not the ER” mentality. Strip away the generational framing and there’s a key point for every business: most of the stress in modern work isn’t caused by genuine urgency, but by teams treating every task as if it’s life-or-death. It’s planning disguised as crisis. What’s changing is that younger workers no longer see that as a badge of honour, and they’re right. If everything is urgent, nothing is. Good teams get better not by sprinting harder, but by deciding what matters, and when. Read the piece here (paywalled, but you can access with Archive.)

Micro-dramas are Hollywood’s new gold rush

Vertical dramas – phone-first, soap-y micro series that cost a fraction of a streaming episode – are exploding in the US. Platforms like ReelShort and DramaBox are pulling in millions of viewers with stories shot fast, cheap and designed for dopamine delivery on a small screen. Hollywood execs used to sneer at the format, but that’s changing: budgets are rising, veteran producers are piling in and even the big studios are circling. It’s a natural progression: when an industry becomes too slow and too expensive, the real innovation happens at the edges. Micro dramas look like the early version of a new content economy – one that values pace, volume and format-fit more than prestige. Get the story here.

AI prompt of the week: customer service AI ethics framework

As Cory Doctorow’s article suggests, most companies deploy customer service AI to cut costs, not solve problems – and customers can tell. The result is it's eroded trust that's hard to rebuild. Smart businesses design AI support that genuinely helps, with clear ethical guardrails and human escalation paths built in from day one.

Help me design customer service AI that helps rather than deflects. My context: [business type, common customer issues, current support setup]. Create decision criteria for when to use AI vs. human support, conversational guardrails that prevent 'wearing customers down' and escalation paths that preserve trust. Include success metrics that measure customer satisfaction and resolution quality, not just cost reduction or deflection rates.

A sale is not a single moment

A good exit isn’t luck or timing – it’s a sequence. Each step affects the next, and the founders who understand that flow always get better outcomes than the ones who wing it. Here’s the map you need if you’re thinking about selling a business.

Drop me a line

If something here nudged a question or an opinion out of you, feel free to send it in my direction. I can’t promise I’ll agree, but I can promise that the best responses will make it into a future newsletter.

Cheers!
Adam

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