Shock Therapy
The only way to do AI adoption
This edition will be a hard pill to swallow.
We usually write for a wide range of marketers, creatives, and growth professionals. Not today. This one is for leaders only. People who can make the calls. CMOs who can change direction. Execs who can sign off on the hard stuff.
We’ll be blunt, practical, and honest.
You’ve been warned.
Shock therapy in our lives
We’re both originally from Hungary. Grew up behind the Iron Curtain in the 80s. Studied politics, history, sociology, alongside everything else. So when we talk about what happened in Eastern Europe in the late 80s and 90s, we’re not citing a Wikipedia summary. We lived it.
When the Wall fell, and the Soviet Union collapsed, Eastern European countries each had to answer the same question: how to transition from socialism to capitalism? The answers split broadly into two camps.
Some countries managed a slow, planned privatization, the political elite carefully overseeing the transfer of state assets. Others went with shock therapy: near-instant privatization, rapid liberalization, short-term chaos.
The verdict is clear. Countries that chose shock therapy — Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states — saw initial pain followed by sustained, structural growth. Poland is now in the G20. The Baltics are catching up with Scandinavia. Countries that chose the slow route, like Hungary, watched their old communist elites become their new capitalist oligarchs. Crony capitalism filled the vacuum that real market competition should have occupied.
If you never compete on the market, your results become fake. Growth without pressure isn’t growth. It’s just a delay. Same with freedom, by the way. You can’t export or install it. You have to fight for it.
A personal story
In 1998, I was 16 and selected by a Soros Foundation program to spend a month in Atlanta. Before that trip, I’d been to Austria and Greece. That was it. I was also a teenager, so all experiences became internal parts of my core identity.
The US in the late 90s was at its peak. The contrast with small-town Hungary hit hard. I came back a different person — impatient, restless, convinced I was playing in a small pond while an ocean was sitting there.
When Hungary joined the EU in 2004, I left a few years later. I’ve lived in several countries since. Now, I only go back to visit my parents.
That trip was my personal shock therapy. Disorienting, yes. But it reset my trajectory. Most of my peers from that same starting point stayed on the slow path. I don’t say that to brag — I say it because the parallel is real and the outcome speaks for itself.
The nature of shock
Shock therapy has the same structure regardless of scale — personal, political, or organizational.
Shock is painful and comes with chaos first. You have to be willing to go there.
Shock deletes the old to make room for the new. Whatever grows in that space grows like a weed: strong, organic, hard to kill.
Shock is a bold investment in a future that isn’t yet fully visible. A north star, not a blueprint.
And in almost every case, shock is worth it. Those who do it with proper planning outlast and outperform those who weren’t brave enough to push the button.
Shock therapy in AI adoption
Shock without planning is just chaos. Shock with planning is a transformation.
Here’s the timeline:
First 2–3 months: radical disruption. Painful and messy. People will transition, some will leave, and workflows will break before they’re rebuilt. Stress will be high.
By month 6, the dust settles. New workflows are installed. The org chart consolidates around the people who adapted.
By months 8–12, you arrive at your north star. Leaner, faster, more productive — and measurably ahead of every competitor who chose the slow path.
The equation itself is simple. There’s no Plan B or Plan C. Just one plan.
Success depends entirely on one thing: did you plan?
If yes, 95% chance it works. You come out with a more productive, more agile, more future-proof team.
If no, 100% chance it falls apart. The shock becomes just noise.
Don’t fixate on the shock itself. It’s a big red button. The work is in everything that happens before you press it.
Shock therapy has three stages: Planning, Shocking, and Stabilization.