Remember the Yellow Pages? | 5 Tests That Tell You Exactly Where You Stand.

Remember The Yellow Pages?

They dominated for decades. They had Google’s power before Google existed - they were how you found anything. I started my career at the Yellow Pages - I watched the floor fall out from underneath them because they waited for clarity while the market moved. Treating the internet as tomorrow’s problem.

March 2020

You heard about a virus overseas. It felt distant. You went to the pub. You went to the office. Then March hit. The world shut down. Some companies had already built the infrastructure - remote systems, digital operations, continuity plans. McKinsey found they compressed 3-4 years of digital adoption into months. I’d just moved to Queensland to take a Director role a few months earlier. Then COVID hit. Suddenly I was running the biggest P&L of my life with skeleton resourcing. That’s when I first used early AI automation - basic chatbots, workflow tools, anything that let a team move faster. While competitors pulled back, we used early AI tools to punch above our weight. We landed a $150K contract, then $1.8m. Within a year, we were delivering more than we ever had with half the headcount. That Director role? I felt massively under-qualified for it. There were leaders more talented than me, but I adapted. They didn’t.

The Timeline Is Short

Today, enterprise AI adoption is growing at rates much faster than any previous technological revolution in history, driven purely by the strength of the technology itself. Matt Shumer’s article “Something Big Is Happening” hit 75 million views in 48 hours. 75 million people read it because it confirmed what they’d been feeling but couldn’t name. Dario Amodei - CEO of Anthropic, the company behind Claude, predicted that 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs will be displaced within 1 to 5 years. This is the person building the technology.

Information Asymmetry

Information Asymmetry is splitting the business world in two. It is driven by a human weakness: we are slow to react to exponential speed. AI is no longer just improving; it is in a feedback loop where the current generation of models is accelerating the creation of the next. If you wait 18 to 24 months for the market to normalise, the gap between your organisation and this early-adopter group will become impossible to close. In 200+ conversations with Australian executives in the last 12 months, most haven’t run a single hands-on AI test. You cannot buy your way into understanding this technology. You have to use it. The window to close this gap is open. It won’t stay open.

Five Tests to Close the Gap

I use Test 1 live with every board I work with. The reaction tells me everything. No executive has made it through all five without finding at least one decision they’d make differently that week. Five tests. Start with Test 1.

Test 1: The Risk Horizon Map

How is AI going to impact you/career/organisation this YEAR - Copy this into Claude or ChatGPT:

“I’m a [age]-year-old [role] running [describe your business] in Australia. Based on the current trajectory of AI, give me a risk assessment over these timeframes: 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, 5 years. For each timeframe, tell me: (1) What specifically changes in my industry? (2) What action should I take now to prepare? (3) How confident should I be in that prediction?” If the AI tells you the risk is 6 months out, you need to move…now. Not sure where your organisation stands? Take the 2-minute AI Readiness Scorecard it takes less time than this test: HERE

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Test 2: The Global Performance Gap

Stop benchmarking locally - You’re competing with the top 10% globally. Copy this into Claude or ChatGPT:

“I’m a [your role] in Australia. Here’s what I currently use AI for: [describe your current AI usage, or say ‘nothing yet’]. Show me what the top 10% of people in this role globally are doing with AI right now. Then give me a 90-day roadmap to close the gap. Include: (1) Which AI tools to test first, (2) Which workflow to automate first, (3) What skills I need to build.” This will hurt most of you, but you need to know.

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Test 3: The Reality Check

A Brisbane CFO I work with saved 8 hours per week on compliance using this exact structure. Go sign up for the paid version of Claude or ChatGPT. Pick one painful workflow - vendor analysis, board reporting, compliance reviews - and run it through. Copy this brief structure:

“You are a [role] specialising in [domain]. Analyse [document/problem]. Deliver: (1) executive summary under 400 words, (2) comparison table, (3) three risks with mitigations, (4) recommended next action with timeline.” Governance note: If you’re in financial services or healthcare, review any output that references client or patient data before acting on it. OAIC obligations don’t disappear because AI generated the analysis.

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Test 4: The Assumption Stress Test

Use it as a sparring partner. Copy this into Claude or ChatGPT:

“I’m a [role] in [industry] making a decision about [topic]. Here’s my current thinking: [explain your assumption or strategy]. Your job: pressure-test this. Ask me hard questions I haven’t considered. Show me what could go wrong. Challenge my assumptions. Don’t give me answers - give me better questions.” I make every client run this before a major capital decision. The pre-mortem question it generates is usually the one the board should have asked months earlier.

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Test 5: The Speed Audit

How fast you move and what’s technically possible are two different variables. Copy this into Claude or ChatGPT:

“For [your industry] in Australia: (1) What AI tools exist today that most companies aren’t using? (2) If I move 12 months faster than average, what competitive advantages do I gain? (3) What’s stopping most companies from moving faster?”

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The Bottom Line

The companies figuring this out first, realise powerful AI is becoming a “general labor substitute”. They are restructuring entire teams to orchestrate a "country of geniuses in a datacenter", focusing on intelligence output instead of headcount. The ASX 200 companies running these five tests this quarter will have an 18-month head start. In Australia, that gap tends to be decisive. We’ve seen it with every platform shift since the internet. The boards that run these tests this week will know exactly where they stand. Got questions? Need help? Reach out. Ramon Forward this to your leadership team with one question: “Which of these five tests would embarrass us?”

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We specialise in translating AI complexity into strategy that drives business outcomes, Australian executives can act on with confidence. We deliver executable frameworks, board-ready playbooks, and strategy designed for Australian enterprises.Not sure where your organisation stands?