AI Is Reshaping Business: Why Companies Must Rethink How They Operate

Interview with Joe Wolski of Godel Technologies

AI pilots are no longer enough. Discover why businesses must rethink their operating models, focus on customer value and turn AI into a competitive advantage.

AI could make your business faster, cheaper and more efficient, yet still leave you behind. The real risk, argues Joe Wolski, Chief Technology Officer at Godel Technologies, is using AI to improve outdated ways of working instead of rethinking them entirely. He explores why organisations must redesign business models, prioritise customer value and invest in capabilities that will set them apart in an AI-native world.

Was there a turning point that really shaped how you lead in technology, and what did it teach you about making decisions when things change quickly? 

Yes, there was a turning point in 2019- 2020, when we were early in cloud adoption and transformation. What was apparent to me early on was that when there is a major technology transformation, a customer’s buying criteria are almost always based on trust and the belief  that you can help and support them, over anything else.

Therefore, in a mature market, you’d always find the buying criteria are around cost, brand, all of that kind of stuff. In a new, uncertain market, it becomes more about trust in relationships. So, I’ve made sure to intentionally spend any spare time I have in front of customers. I make sure I am in front of customers as much as possible, as I want them to feel that we, as a leadership team and a board, aren’t faceless and that we care about the outcomes and impact.

Overall, transformations like these, especially AI, are vital to the success of their business. 

AI is moving beyond experimentation and becoming part of everyday business decisions. What’s changing most in how organisations think about technology and where to invest?

There was definitely an early misconception, with many thinking that AI was quick and easy to bring into the enterprise. But customers now realise it is a complicated technology that cannot be rushed and requires significant investment and effort. As a result, they’re being far more deliberate about where they spend their time and energy. 

6 months ago, customers were looking at 15 or 20 AI pilots, but now you’re seeing them homing in on two or three use cases they really care about. 

Trying AI is one thing, but making it work in everyday business is another. What’s holding organisations back from taking that next step?

I think a lot of organisations are still approaching AI as an adoption problem, whereas actually, in my view, it’s a transformation. Instead of simply giving people AI tools and expecting the world to transform around them, organisations need to take a step back and focus on what the new operating structure looks, what the new business model and where the value will be in the future, rather than focusing on how to make all their users AI-enabled. 

I think a lot of organisations are still approaching AI as an adoption problem, whereas actually, in my view, it’s a transformation.

From what I’ve seen, AI is making people look in the mirror in an uncomfortable light in many organisations, including ours. We’re finding process breakdowns that have been in our organisation for years. When you move at human speed, you can paint over them, but when you start moving at machine speed, it becomes a big problem quickly.  

AI is also changing how software gets built and maintained. What parts of the traditional approach to software development need a rethink?

From my perspective, it’s the entire way organisations think about how they’re structured, in terms of what they’re going to build and why. That is still a very traditional process, and it’s not geared in any way, shape or form to operate at the pace at which AI can now build. 

Not every organisation can start from scratch. How should leaders decide what needs to change and what’s still worth keeping?

I think of it in terms of alpha use cases and beta use cases. Beta use cases are things that don’t necessarily differentiate the business. Software engineering is an example. You could spend years building your own agentic engineering platform, but there are 20 specialists already in the world who can do it better than you. It’s their core, and it’s not yours. You could say the same about marketing and a lot of business unit functions: they’re not going to change the value to your customer. 

Where an organisation’s true value lives now is in the customer journey, and anything that impacts the customer journey is something people should really focus on modernising, improving and getting ready for AI. 

For example, if you look at Godel, we say we can reduce project timeframes from four months to 48 hours. 

If you look at how IT services providers have operated for decades, they usually start with some form of discovery, design or assessment work, typically a three-to-four-month exercise costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, only to produce a document telling you what you can do and what it’s going to cost. 

AI can now be used to reverse engineer the customer’s current state within hours with the bulk of the three to four months manually working being completed immediately. 

Even though we can no longer charge for these services, the added benefit is that we can communicate with customers at a much deeper level earlier on, before they’ve even spent any money with us. 

There’s no shortage of new tools and possibilities, but time and resources are always limited. How do you work out which opportunities are worth pursuing and which to leave for another time?

Building on my previous alpha and beta point: if I use our own business model at Godel, our alpha is engineering. 

The spine of what we do is software engineering, and I think that’s how all customers should be thinking about it: what’s really going to impact your business model, rather than your business operations.

We make sure we invest in proprietary capabilities, workflows and ways of working so that we’re incredible at it. If we’re not differentiated in that space, we won’t survive the next 20, 30, 40 years. Equally, to use finance as an example, it doesn’t worry me that we’re not transforming our finance department to be AI-native yet. I’ll push that to the back of the queue. 

If someone came to our finance director and said we can offer these elements as a service now, we’d probably take it, because it won’t really impact the success of our business. 

The spine of what we do is software engineering, and I think that’s how all customers should be thinking about it: what’s really going to impact your business model, rather than your business operations. 

In my opinion, the main focus on AI over the last 12 to 18 months has been on operations efficiency using AI to reduce costs. But this should be flipped around with people thinking about how AI can be used to differentiate, win and survive in an AI-native world. 

All of this is changing the CTO role as well. What skills or qualities do technology leaders need to develop?

The CTO role is now about change and transformation, and being able to articulate the reasons, the need, the complexities and the challenges in a far more complex environment than they’ve ever operated in. 

A CTO’s role is more about helping an organisation understand why it needs to change its current structure or ways of working, and what that journey is going to look like.

The traditional CTO is usually far more technical. Now, I’m not saying the need to be technical is no longer there; it absolutely is, but it’s far less about being on the tools and deciding which platform to use, such as Salesforce or another CRM. 

A CTO’s role is more about helping an organisation understand why it needs to change its current structure or ways of working, and what that journey is going to look like. 

A few years down the road, what will set organisations that genuinely adapt to AI apart from those that simply add it to the way they already work?

Yes, I think we will easily see a significant difference in a few years. Right now, it is a challenge to know who’s saying it versus who’s actually doing it, because the gap hasn’t widened yet. 

One is the pace and speed at which organisations can move. The second is smaller management structures and far more involvement from executives and senior managers. So, a lot more doing as well as leading, and I think the leading and doing roles will converge again.

Executive Profile

Joe Wolski is Chief Technology Officer at Godel Technologies, leading technology and AI strategy. With over a decade of senior leadership experience, including CTO and strategy roles, he specialises in AI, cloud, digital engineering and software delivery. Joe helps organisations modernise legacy systems, integrate AI securely, accelerate software development and translate emerging technologies into practical business value and competitive advantage.