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."

As the email puts it, the central argument is that analysis now runs "at AI speed," while judgment still runs "at human speed." The text says three moves can help turn AI's speed into better strategy decisions.

The email does not say what those three moves are and gives no figures, cases or specific data. It offers only the headline, a short teaser and a link to the full article in McKinsey Quarterly, so its content cannot be summarized here beyond this premise.

Under "Also Consider," the email recommends two 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 argument fits into the current debate over human oversight of decisions made with AI assistance and by autonomous agents, although the email does not go into this.