Lessons from re-organising coldstores

Does AI kill tactical thinking?

One of many things which confuses me about the modern world is why AI seems to give me a bigger edge than others in software engineering. I know I’m not alone - others are doing what I’m doing. But most of the engineers I know aren’t.

I’ve really struggled to understand this. Sure, I juggle multiple accounts, have lots of projects running in parallel, ruthlessly minimise meetings and cut dross from my day. But others do this too.

And then as I walked through the hills in the rain last week listening to a podcast a lightbulb suddenly lit. Could the reason be the difference between strategic and tactical thinking?

The supermarket

When I was sixteen I spent my summer vacation working in Iceland. The frozen food shop, not the country.

Over the summer I got the chance to do some extra shifts in the store in the neighbouring town; they were short staffed - the two folk who stocked the freezer cabinets had both left suddenly.

I showed up one morning at 8am to find the shop floor wrecked (a technical term). The freezer cabinets were half empty. Best sellers like ice-cream and chips nowhere to be seen. The manager took me upstairs via a rickety lift to the coldstore - a big room at -21C where all the stock waiting to go into the freezer cabinets was kept. And it was a disaster area too - everything was all over the place.

At one level my job was simple - find stuff in the coldstore, brave the rickety lift with the gate I was convinced would chop my arm off if I didn’t pay attention, and fill the cabinets. But there are always multiple solutions to any problem. And finding the right one can make life a lot more pleasant.

So my plan became: restock the key things as quickly as possible (chips, ice-cream, pizzas). Then with a bit of breathing room, I could tackle the coldstore. Rearrange everything into logical groupings - all the ice-cream in one corner, ready meals in another, veg, fish, meat etc all grouped together. And then, because I knew what stock we had - and where it was - filling up the rest of the cabinets became easy.

Looking back I was employed to do a tactical job - just fill the cabinets. But that became a short-term tactical thing - filling the worst gaps first - which then made the space for a strategic thing - reorg the coldstore.

And there was a third piece as well - a meta-strategic piece - figuring out the strategy for the strategy.

The podcast

As the rain ran down my neck, the podcast host described the difference between tactical software engineering - doing the thing that’s in front of you - bug fixing, replying to emails, LLDs - and strategic engineering. The latter is deciding what to do. Changing your SDLC. Learning new tools. Exploring. It’s fuzzier. Less clear when you are done. Less tick-off-able.

And suddenly I realised - this is what makes the difference. I thought back to my days in that Iceland and realised: strategic thinking is something I’ve done all my life.

Ask my long-suffering wife or my mother or countless ex-managers - and they’ll all tell you I’m not good at doing what I’m told. I’ll reinvent processes. Change things up. I’m confident the manager in Iceland didn’t expect me to re-organize their coldstore. But I didn’t ask - I just did. To me it was clearly the right thing to do. Better to present as an improvement and ask for forgiveness if they are cross.

In the past this trait has been a curse and a blessing. Sometimes people don’t want their code refactored. Or their spec process upended. But in the new AI world where everything is constantly changing? I think it’s essential. Keeping up requires constant reinvention.

My business partner and I have rebuilt our SDLC. The way we build code with AI is very different from just a month ago. The AI does the tactical software engineering - we are both good at strategy - so that’s what we do.

And so?

Historically most folk in an org are tactical; you don’t need a lot of strategic thinkers. Data is hard to come by but historically it seems only 4-7% are strongly strategic; the rest tactical. But we’re now in a world (for software development at least) where AI can do all the tactical work. There is no reason to be writing code, LLDs, reviewing code, debugging at this point.

A few months ago I ran an experiment. I found five senior managers and gave each of them Claude Code. Then I encouraged them to dedicate a week to learning how to use it; clear their decks, pretend they were on vacation and throw themselves at it. Of the five only one engaged. For week after week the others prioritised short-term tactical; they all agreed AI was important. But not important enough to be done now.

At the time I couldn’t understand it. But I now wonder if the strategic/tactical split could explain it. Could it be that the manager who spent time on this is a more strategic thinker than the others? They figured out the meta-strategic piece that gave them the bandwidth to do the strategic piece. The others didn’t.

In a future world where we need strategic thinking, the question becomes: can you learn this? And the answer seems to be yes, it’s mostly learnable. But it requires effort. And, critically, it requires that initial meta-strategic piece - you’ve got to figure out your strategy for learning strategy. There is hope.

But if, like me, you’ve never been good at doing what you are told, then perhaps you’ve already got what might be turning into one of the most valuable skills to have right now.