Hey there,
What happens when AI stops being an experiment and starts behaving like infrastructure? AI is moving out of pilots and into daily operations. Regulations are shifting from policy debates to courtrooms. Security is no longer reactive, it’s being designed to act on its own.
See how 2026 will favor leaders who build systems that operates quietly and deliver.
In this issue:
Playbook of the Day
How to Run the “Foundry” Strategy in 20 Minutes
Goal: Bridge the gap between “futurism” and “function” to upgrade marketing into a high-velocity margin driver.
Who: The Converged C-Suite (CMO, CIO, CTO) + Monks Tech and Creative Leads at the same time every workday.
Before the Brief (5 mins):
Tech leads list 1 AI-native tool (Monks.Flow/LiveVision) being pushed to the "edge" today.
Creative leads identify 1 "culture graphic" signal to replace a static demographic.
Meeting lead highlights anything tagged “Novelty” to be replaced with “Discernment.”
During the 15 minutes:
Intelligence & Creation (4 mins): Each lead reports: 1 creative win, 1 data insight generated from it, and 1 cost-compression metric. No "futurism" talk, focusing only on functional data.
Orchestration & Risks (6 mins): Review "urgent" items. Focus on the "steering wheel", and assign 1 owner to change the friction between the tech stack and the creative output.
The Blueprint for Tomorrow (3 mins): Host recaps 3–5 actions to move from "Pilot" to "Native." Focus on the roadmap (AWS/NVIDIA integrations) and receive a verbal "yes" from leads.
Rules: No "made with AI" novelty talk, no gadget-gazing, keep it about mature agentic workflows and today’s bottom-line returns.
Latest News
States & Feds Clashing Power Struggles 💥
Published: 12/29/2025
Last January 1, 2026, a wave of state AI laws officially hit the ground running. California’s TFAIA now requires safety audits for "frontier" models, while Texas’s RAIGA bans AI use for discriminatory or criminal intent. However, a December 11 Executive Order has flipped the script. The White House is launching a "Litigation Task Force" to challenge provisions, arguing they stifle innovation and violate the Commerce Clause. This moves battle from state capitals to federal courts, leaving businesses in a high-stakes waiting game.
Upside: If the federal government wins, you avoid a "patchwork" of fifty different regulatory hurdles. A single national standard would mean your engineering and legal teams build once rather than redesigning tools for every state line. Texas also offers a 36-month regulatory sandbox, giving you a safe harbor to test new AI systems without the threat of state enforcement while the legal dust settles.
Impact: You are now operating in a "gray zone." While state laws are technically live, federal pre-emption could render them void within months. Build your 2026 roadmap to meet California’s transparency requirements today, but keep your systems flexible. Don’t lock into expensive, permanent compliance infrastructure for state laws that may not survive a federal court challenge by summer.
ServiceNow Dropping $7.75B to Lockdown Cybersecurity Power Strategy ⚙️
Published: 01/05/2026
Building a massive play for the future of industrial security, ServiceNow is acquiring Armis for $7.75 billion. While traditional platforms miss "invisible" assets like factory robots and medical devices, Armis knows them all. By merging this visibility with ServiceNow’s automation, they’re creating AI-native shields fixing vulnerabilities across your entire infrastructure before humans ever has to intervene.
Upside: This eliminates "shadow tech" potential risks for global operations. You get a live, automated inventory of every connected device, from the boardroom to loading docks. It replaces messy security workflows with primary dashboard, allowing your teams to manage thousands of IoT and OT devices with the same precision as a standard laptop.
Impact: This move transforms security from reactive firefighting into automated resilience. As AI adoption expands your attack surface, this integration lets you expand fast without the security debt. It lowers the potential risk of operational downtime and minimizes emergency costs, providing you data-backed guarantees that your digital footprint is protected.
Orchestration Defeats Automation 🦾
Published: 12/17/2025
Leaders from SAP, Coupa, ORO Labs, and Proxima confirms that 2026 is the year we stop "piloting" AI and start living in it. The year of simple task automation has passed. Today’s change focuses on agentic workflows, where AI doesn't just move data but encodes your brand’s judgment and compliance into every transaction. This moves supply chain resilience out of the "crisis response" category and embeds it directly into the enterprise architecture as a permanent, self-optimizing ecosystem.
Upside: This eliminates the need to reinvent the wheel for every market shift. By moving toward intelligent orchestration, COOs gain a bird's-eye view that connects planning, logistics, and manufacturing into one fluid stream. Instead of manual troubleshooting, your teams can simulate trade-offs in real-time, allowing you to capture value while competitors are still trying to clean up their spreadsheets.
Impact: Successful deployment hinges on two pillars: clean data foundations and human fluency. While AI replaces the traditional user interface, it also exposes cracks in your data infrastructure. The winners of 2026 will be leaders who bridge those technical gaps while doubling down on the one thing machines can't replicate: the ability to influence people and frame strategic decisions.
Prompt of the Day
COO Battle Map Prompts
Trigger Event | Action | Use Case Example |
|---|---|---|
When workflows feel bloated. | Process redesign, agent-first protocols, and touchpoint elimination. | Clear design, agent-first, protocols, and instant solution pathways. |
When AI costs increase. | Inference auditing, model comparison, and task routing policy. | Short list of cost-scanning, tariff simulation, and potential impact. |
During trade volatility. | Supplier scanning, tariff simulation, and alternative playbooks. | Actionable intelligence on potential risks who or what they affect. |
Expanding digital teams. | Agent personas, decision boundaries, and escalation triggers. | Define positions and transparency reporting |
After board scrutiny. | Decision path audit, source tracing, and transparency reporting. | Root-cause analysis, source verification, next steps to prevent issues. |
Prompt
“Act as my risk and operational radar. Based on the current project’s state, resource allocation, and department-level friction points, identify the top 3 high-impact risks that threatens our delivery milestones or OpEx targets in the next 30 days. Rank them by impact.”
Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point.
One Last Thing
Execution can be a leverage.
The best work often happens when nobody is watching, and this is one of those moments. In a gray regulatory moment and widening attack surface, modular compliance and orchestration-first workflows let you expand without risking much.
This is quiet progress. Fewer handoffs. Better judgment. Systems that moves before problems announce themselves.
Until next edition,
Chloe Rivers
Editor-in-Chief
COO Intelligence
P.S. Interested in sponsoring a future issue? Just reply to this email and I’ll send packages!