During preparations for an Axios board meeting last week, the author noticed a decisive shift: discussions framed around six-month horizons felt unrealistic. Where confident visibility used to span months, today the author’s reliable line of sight is at most six weeks.
He calls the phenomenon "post-processable velocity": a pace of change so rapid that individuals, companies, markets and governments cannot fully absorb, understand or respond in real time. Previously, the defining acceleration was in information — news spreading instantly, ideas circulating globally. Now the defining acceleration is in capability: what a person can do, what AI can enable, what a small team can ship or what a competitor can automate can shift within weeks.
Why this matters
This shift matters because it undermines the stability that strategic planning traditionally relies on. Decisions that seem logical when made can become obsolete by the time they are implemented. Staffing plans may be based on tasks that software learns to perform weeks later. Regulations can feel antiquated as soon as they become law. The cycle is self-reinforcing: improving intelligence (for example, AI) raises capabilities; rising competition and business adaptation drive costs down; adoption spreads unevenly but inexorably.
A brief history
The author argues that a prior turning point came in early 2007, the year he helped start Politico and the year the modern information ecosystem — the iPhone, Android, Facebook, Twitter, the cloud and streaming — began to accelerate. For nearly two decades that acceleration continued, then fused with AI; he believes we have now fully crossed into a new era where capability velocity dominates.
State of play and strategic implications
As someone who reads about, uses and deploys AI across a company, the author finds it nearly impossible to keep up with how quickly capabilities evolve. When you cannot reliably know what is possible six weeks from now, planning on timelines measured in months or years becomes difficult, if not foolish.
He is not declaring strategy dead, but he says the old mental models for building strategy no longer suffice. Most strategic planning assumes a reasonably stable set of facts: known competitors, predictable technologies, and customer behaviors that change gradually. Post-processable velocity destroys that stability.
The author cites Donald Rumsfeld’s notion of "known knowns" and Silicon Valley’s focus on "first principles," and merges these with Axios’s philosophy of "simplify." He reduces strategic thinking to three core questions: What do we know to be true? What matters most? What are the fewest things we can do with the fewest people in the shortest time?
Practical recommendations
He offers four ideas leaders and teams can apply now:
- No-regret moves: Reduce reliance on plans that require you to be right about distant futures. Pursue clear directions but hold paths loosely.
- Monthly mentality: Force a monthly reassessment of priorities and information tools — because that is how fast things are changing.
- Simplify: Do fewer things and remove bureaucratic obstacles so you can adapt and succeed more easily. (The author notes a forthcoming book on this topic.)
- Amplify human intelligence: Continuously improve where and how you get information so you can better see the shifting field.
Bottom line
Recognizing that we are in an age of post-processable velocity is the first step; actually meeting the moment requires changing planning rhythms, simplifying operations and constantly updating information inputs. Leaders and teams should consider shortening decision cycles and focusing on a small set of high-impact actions so they can respond to capability changes that can arrive within weeks.
Note: For CEOs and their teams, the author invites readers to subscribe to Jim’s new weekly Axios C‑Suite newsletter and to preorder the book "Simplify," which is scheduled for release on Sept. 15.
