From GIGO to SISO: AI’s Strategic Divide

On the surface, it looks like progress. But underneath, it’s classic GIGO. The problem isn’t the AI. It’s that the artefact never carried the real strategic intent — reducing churn in the first 30 days.

Instead of encoding purpose, it just threw words at the wall. And because AI doesn’t invent meaning, it simply reflects the lack of it back at scale. The result? Polished noise. Teams run sprints, stakeholders get updates, but no one is closer to the outcome that actually matters.

That’s why GIGO feels so insidious in product work. Artefacts written without intent don’t just fail silently — they actively mislead. And when AI tools amplify them, the gap between what looks like a strategy and what actually is a strategy only widens.

The divide becomes visible when outputs look convincing

Here’s the trap: sometimes GIGO still looks good. An AI roadmap tool fed with half-baked initiatives might churn out a quarterly plan that seems spot on:

• Sensible timelines
• Tidy swimlanes
• Realistic milestones

Everyone in the room nods because the artefact carries the veneer of strategy. But in truth, it’s built on sand.

The danger here is worse than obvious failure. At least with clear garbage, you can see it for what it is. With “lucky” outputs, the organisation convinces itself it’s aligned when it isn’t. Real work gets done — sprints complete, features ship, metrics move — but all in the wrong direction. It’s execution divorced from strategy, a kind of high-functioning misalignment.

This is where the divide between GIGO and SISO reveals itself most starkly. AI will occasionally stumble onto something useful, but it’s a fluke. Without encoded intent in the inputs, the coherence isn’t repeatable. Teams may hit a few wins by chance, but the system as a whole drifts further from purpose. And because the output looks convincing, the drift is harder to detect until it’s too late.

Escaping GIGO means deliberately writing for SISO

There’s nothing accidental about Strategy In, Strategy Out. It doesn’t happen because you stumbled on the right wording or lucked into a half-decent backlog. SISO is the result of a deliberate writing habit — one that treats every artefact as a container for intent.

Take the example of an initiative framed as: Reduce onboarding churn by 20% through personalised education flows. Notice the difference:

• There’s a measurable outcome
• There are customer signals baked in
• There are constraints that tell the AI (and the team) what not to do

Feed that into a roadmap generator and the output isn’t just tidy — it’s coherent. The AI produces epics and stories that clearly ladder back to the goal. Six months later, new joiners can open the backlog and instantly see the through-line. That’s the power of SISO.

The point isn’t that AI makes the strategy for you. It’s that by writing strategically, you create artefacts that any AI tool — and any future team member — can carry forward without losing the plot. It’s insurance against context-switching, leadership churn, and the slow erosion of intent.

Writing for SISO isn’t just about cleaner AI outputs. It’s about resilience. It ensures that no matter how the tools evolve, the strategy survives.

Conclusion

The choice is stark.

Generative AI doesn’t create strategy. It exposes it. Every artefact you write becomes a test: does the AI carry intent forward, or does it amplify the absence of it? On one side of the divide is GIGO — polished outputs that feel reassuring but conceal drift, leaving teams busy but misaligned. On the other is SISO — artefacts written with clarity that allow AI to scale purpose, creating a system where intent survives re-orgs, tool changes, and even leadership churn.

The difference is not in the tools. It’s in the writing. Strategy doesn’t magically appear because the AI can generate roadmaps with coloured swimlanes or neatly phrased initiatives. It appears when purpose is encoded in the artefacts themselves — when initiative statements point to outcomes, when epics frame impact rather than activity, when stories serve as anchors instead of to-do notes.

That’s why this divide matters. It’s not just a question of whether AI “works” for you. It’s a question of whether your strategy is strong enough to survive being reflected back at you. And in that reflection, the truth is clear: if you’re stuck in GIGO, AI will multiply the chaos. If you write for SISO, AI will amplify your intent.

The choice is yours.