CxC Ep39: What Business Leaders Need to Know About AI
September 2, 2026 · 1 hr 3 min
Why listen
Most companies are spending more on AI and getting less from it — here is why and what to do instead.
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In this episode
- Why individual AI productivity gains can actually hurt your organization
- How agentic systems quietly balloon enterprise AI costs through token consumption
- The difference between layering AI onto broken processes and rebuilding them natively
- What business leaders must show to justify AI investment with real ROI
About this episode
This week on Code x Connor, Connor and Dorian unpack the growing disconnect between individual AI productivity and actual business performance, why agentic systems could dramatically increase enterprise AI costs, and what it will take for companies to rethink how they’re adopting AI at a fundamental level.
In this episode, we discuss:
→ The difference between AI automation, augmentation, and true autonomy
→ Why using AI feels more productive, even when it’s actually delivering less value
→ How individual productivity gains can create organizational chaos
→ Enterprise AI adoption’s shift from bottom-up experimentation to top-down transformation
→ McKinsey’s 1-3-5 rule for investing in agentic AI, process redesign, and workforce adoption
→ Why agents consume dramatically more tokens than humans, and what it means for budgets
→ Rising costs due to token consumption, hardware constraints, and data center shortages
→ Why token efficiency is increasingly important considerations in enterprise AI architecture
→ The growing pressure on business leaders to prove ROI on their AI investments
→ Rebuilding AI-native business processes vs. layering technology onto broken ones
→ Why traceability and auditability become critical as agents take on more business processes
→ The repercussions of replacing enterprise software with vibe-coded applications
→ Why AI startups need to sell business outcomes instead of usage-based software
→ The forward deployed engineering and platform-based approach to enterprise software
Be sure to follow this channel for insights and perspective from industry leaders, and schedule a meeting with us through www.codestrap.com to learn more about our offering.
Codestrap
Codestrap (X): https://x.com/Codestrap_ai
CodeStrap (LI): https://www.linkedin.com/company/codestrap
Codestrap (Substack): https://codestrap1.substack.com/
Codestrap (Medium): https://medium.com/codestrap
About Code and Connor
Code & Connor is where Connor Deeks and Dorian Smiley ask the questions most AI podcasts won't. Two founders — one strategist, one engineer — in honest conversations with executives, builders, and practitioners about what's actually happening at the intersection of AI and the enterprise.
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