Why AI Isn’t the Disruption—Coordination Is

For all the noise about AI taking jobs, the real revolution isn't about replacement—it's about removal. Not of people, but of processes. Not of roles, but of roadblocks. The companies pulling ahead aren't just using AI to do tasks faster—they're using it to eliminate what needed coordination in the first place. And that's a much bigger deal than it sounds.

You're not competing with a bot. You're competing with a business that's dramatically reducing its reliance on meetings, middle management layers, and manual workflows to move money, process data, or deliver client services. While some human coordination remains essential—especially for accountability and complex judgment—the gap is widening between firms that minimize coordination friction and those still drowning in it.

The Coordination Tax Is the Silent Killer

In a widely-circulated piece titled The Coordination Tax, the author lays bare what most business owners intuitively feel but rarely quantify: the cost of simply keeping people aligned. In traditional firms, every new headcount adds exponential complexity. The more you grow, the more time is spent on syncing calendars, clarifying roles, managing handoffs, and avoiding duplication.

But what if much of that could be eliminated?

Firms operating at 10x revenue per employee aren't doing so by working harder. They're structured differently. They use AI agents not just to complete tasks, but to orchestrate workflows—though human oversight remains critical for high-stakes decisions. These agents don't file reports—they reduce the need for reports by executing routine decisions directly within defined parameters. They don't remind people to follow up—they follow up themselves. That's a qualitatively different game.

Healthcare and B2B Payments: Friction as Strategy

Two recent deep dives from PYMNTS show how this plays out in entrenched industries. In healthcare, the real bottleneck isn't clinical—it's administrative. Billions are lost not because care wasn't delivered, but because it wasn't coded, billed, or reimbursed correctly. AI here doesn't disrupt medicine—it disrupts the paperwork.

Likewise in B2B payments, smart CFOs are rethinking not how to pay—but why it takes so many emails, approvals, and delays to move money. The actual transaction is instant. The process around it is glacial. And AI is gutting that process.

For small firms still routing invoices through accountants, paper trails, or manual reconciliation, this isn't just inefficiency—it's a competitive liability.

The China Paradox: Compute ≠ Coordination

Meanwhile, a fascinating critique of China's AI strategy reveals a critical insight: scale and compute power alone don't guarantee competitiveness. Despite massive investment, China's AI efforts are hamstrung by siloed institutions, limited access to open-source models, and a lack of fluid collaboration across sectors.

In contrast, GPT's 800 million weekly users—largely outside China—are building an ecosystem not just of tools, but of shared workflows. AI is not just a technology; it's a coordination platform. And countries, like companies, that fail to embrace this will fall behind.

Meta and the Cost of Coordination Avoidance

Even Meta, for all its scale, offers a cautionary tale. Internal documents show the company deliberately avoided fixing scam ad issues by making them harder to detect, rather than solving the root problem. Why? Because coordination—across compliance, engineering, product, and policy—was too expensive.

The irony? AI could have made detection and enforcement seamless. But when companies privilege short-term fiefdoms over long-term integration, they miss the real opportunity.

From Execution to Orchestration: The New Small Firm Advantage

Here's the shift that matters: AI is no longer just about automating tasks—it's about automating coordination. And that's a strategic wedge for small firms.

Big companies have legacy systems, siloed data, and bureaucratic inertia. You don't. You can integrate AI agents across your accounting, scheduling, client onboarding, and reporting workflows without waiting on IT or legal.

That means you can:

- Move money faster than enterprise finance teams stuck in multi-step approvals- Deliver client updates without human bottlenecks or handoffs- Collapse the time from inquiry to invoicing from days to minutes- Potentially reclaim 10–30% of your team's time lost to internal "status checks"—though actual gains depend on clean data, integration effort, and your specific workflows

Strategic Framework: Measure Your Coordination Tax

To make this actionable, here's a simple diagnostic:

1. Time-to-Decision: How long does it take your firm to go from client question to final answer?2. People-per-Process: How many people touch a single invoice, proposal, or report before it's done?3. Manual Handoffs: How many recurring tasks require someone to pass information to someone else?4. Redundancy Rate: How often do two people unknowingly do overlapping work?5. Meeting Ratio: What percentage of your internal meetings could be replaced with automated updates?

If your answers make you wince, you're not alone—but you are exposed.

This Isn't About Tools—It's About Structure

The Synvo AI and SBG partnership in Southeast Asia offers another glimpse into the future: regionally integrated AI orchestration. Their strategy isn't just deploying chatbots. They're building autonomous systems that handle everything from procurement to compliance across national borders.

That's not just automation—it's structure. And it's a blueprint for small firms, too: stop thinking of AI as a bolt-on. Start treating it as the backbone of a firm that minimizes coordination needs because it's already aligned.

The Next 12–18 Months Will Widen the Gap

Six months ago, AI was a novelty. Over the next 12–18 months, incremental AI adoption will separate firms that systematically reduce coordination friction from those still operating on 2015 workflows. The firms that win won't be those who "adopt tools"—they'll be the ones who eliminate layers.

If you're a CPA, consultant, or service provider still running your business with emails, spreadsheets, and "quick syncs," this isn't about catching up anymore. It's about whether you'll remain competitive at all. The good news? You don't need to overhaul everything at once. Start small, build momentum, and let each win fund the next integration.

This Week's Resource

This week, we're sharing our free whitepaper: "The 8th Disruption – AI Strategies for the Employeeless Enterprise". It unpacks how coordination—not labor—is the next frontier of efficiency, and what that means for firms earning $500K–$5M who want to compete without hiring a 10-person support team.

Download the whitepaper here and see how to restructure your workflows for speed, not just scale.