Readiness Is Built Long Before the Moment Arrives
What we see at the Olympics is performance. A routine or a race that’s over in minutes and medals that are decided in the blink of an eye. All these epic displays are the visible results of years of behind-the-scenes preparation.
The Olympics remind us that peak performance isn’t accidental. It emerges from deliberate planning, operational agility, and technological readiness. For organizations, this means recognizing that success depends on sustained investment across multiple dimensions.
The Work Behind the Performance
Take Simone Biles, whose dominance didn’t spring from a single breakthrough year or one Olympic cycle. She began elite training as a child and spent over a decade refining fundamentals before becoming a household name. This integration of long-term vision, disciplined decision-making, and constant analysis of competition and performance is what we term Strategic readiness.
Her success also reflects cultural readiness; an environment shaped over years of deliberate investment in learning and adaptability. That culture did not emerge spontaneously. It was built through sustained focus on fundamentals long before results were visible. For organizations, particularly in IT, this mirrors the need to invest early and consistently in core capabilities such as architecture, talent, and governance rather than chasing short term wins.
Strategic readiness aligns leadership, vision, and execution so your organization can adapt without losing stability as priorities shift.
Readiness in Practice: Lessons from Elite Athletes
At the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, the stories behind the medals say more than the medal count. Mikaela Shiffrin ending an eight-year drought. Elana Meyers Taylor, at 41, finally claiming the gold that had escaped her for years. Italy having its best Winter Olympics ever after leaving Beijing four years ago with just two golds. Norway on pace to lead the medal count at three consecutive Games. These don’t look like the results of last-minute preparation. They look like exactly what they are: years of quiet, deliberate work finally becoming visible.
Then there’s Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, born in Oslo and trained in the Norwegian system, who, in the 2026 Winter Games, chose to represent his mother’s home country of Brazil. He won gold in the giant slalom, becoming the first athlete from South America to stand on a Winter Olympic podium in 102 years of trying. The lesson here is that deliberate commitment to a vision can outrun inherited advantage, and that’s exactly the bet every organization makes when it decides to invest in readiness before the results are visible.
None of these athletes rely solely on adrenaline or luck. They perform at the level their preparation makes possible. In IT, the same principle applies. Resilient processes, integrated workflows, and systems built to perform under pressure don’t appear overnight. They’re the result of sustained investment long before the moment of demand arrives.
Organizations Face the Same Reality
Organizations often say they want to be “ready for change,” but readiness is rarely created in moments of urgency. Like Olympic athletes, teams operate through long cycles with limited immediate feedback. Leaders invest in initiatives that may take months or years to mature, like brand awareness, modernizing infrastructure, standardizing processes, or building new capabilities. During this period, progress can feel incremental and difficult to measure. The benefits are not always obvious day to day. Yet these early investments determine whether organizations can scale, adapt, and respond effectively when conditions shift.
As organizations grow in size and complexity, sustaining readiness becomes less about individual effort and more about the systems that support consistent execution.
The Role of Technology and AI in Organizational Readiness
Organizations rely on technology to track performance across longer horizons, surface issues earlier, and improve consistency across teams. AI builds on this foundation by helping teams learn from patterns that are difficult to see manually. It can highlight emerging trends, anticipate change earlier, and support more informed decision-making as complexity increases. Over time, these capabilities strengthen organizational muscle memory, much like training does for athletes.
Yet many AI initiatives fail not during deployment, but during adoption and scale. The core problem is not the technology itself; it’s the organization’s level of readiness. According to BCG, nearly three out of four companies are unable to move AI from promise to value. The barrier is rarely the technology. It’s the foundation underneath it.
In this sense, AI acts as a magnifier. Strong organizations become stronger. But in organizations lacking clarity, alignment, or disciplined execution, weaknesses are amplified. As we explored after Super Bowl LX, infrastructure failures rarely announce themselves. They accumulate quietly, through small gaps in governance, testing, and accountability. When readiness is ignored, the consequences are predictable.
Organizations experience low returns on AI investments, internal resistance, fragmented systems, and ultimately a loss of leadership confidence in the technology. These failures are frequently blamed on AI, when in reality they stem from gaps in organizational design.
Showing Up Ready When It Counts
When markets shift, technologies evolve, or expectations change, companies must consider whether they have spent the time beforehand building the foundations that make effective response possible. Readiness is built quietly, over years, through discipline, alignment, and sustained investment. When the moment arrives, it simply becomes visible.
