McKinsey: the human-judgment bottleneck versus the speed of AI in strategy

By McKinsey & Company · Tue, 20 Oct 2026 14:49:00 +0000.

The email is a McKinsey Quarterly alert signed by Andy West and Sébastien Lacroix, global leaders of McKinsey's Strategy & Corporate Finance practice. It introduces a new article titled "The judgment bottleneck: Balancing AI and human speeds in strategy," under the tagline "Make better strategy decisions."

The central argument, as presented in the email, is that analysis now runs "at AI speed," while judgment still runs "at human speed." According to the text, there are three moves that can help turn AI's speed into better strategy decisions.

The email does not specify what those three moves are, nor does it provide figures, cases or concrete data: it offers only the headline and a brief standfirst with a link to the full article in McKinsey Quarterly. As a result, it is not possible to summarize its content here beyond this premise.

Under the "Also Consider" heading, the email recommends two other related pieces: "How AI is transforming strategy development" and "When can AI make good decisions? The rise of AI corporate citizens."

The rest of the message is standard email footer content: an invitation to contact the authors, a link to the McKinsey Insights app, cookie and privacy notices, and subscription management for the McKinsey Quarterly alerts list.

For industry context, the premise fits into the current debate over human oversight in decision-making processes assisted by AI and autonomous agents, although the email does not expand on this point.