business strategy Archives - Gérard Métrailler

October 13, 2026September 27, 2026

If You Had to Change What You Charge For, Could You?

Every AI contract you sign assumes a pricing unit the market hasn’t settled on. The vendors coping best stopped betting on one.

TL;DR: Salesforce has priced one AI product four ways since May 2025, and the market splits between charging for effort (tokens), output, and outcomes (all-you-can-eat wasn’t sustainable after all). The vendors coping best sell a currency instead: credits whose exchange rate they control, so the next change happens in a rate table. Fund usage data and the currency layer; defer billing, contracts, and comp tied to one unit. Your customer’s budget, built on your unit, is what you can never migrate. Output or outcome pricing leaves rising inference costs on your P&L, and not in a good way. Freeze the exchange rate for each contract term so customers can budget. Bill this year’s usage through two candidate units, on paper, and record what breaks.

July 28, 2026July 30, 2026

The SaaS Bill Just Split Into Two Meters

A watercolor illustration of two rising gauge dials, one small and capped, one large and still climbing, hung as a framed painting on the wall of a modern tech-startup meeting room in downtown San Francisco, with a blue pen and a laptop on the conference table below.

One meter counts how many people log in. The other counts everything the agents they authorized won’t stop doing, and the surviving architecture stacks both.

Your next software renewal will likely carry two prices, not one. One line still counts the people who log in. The new line counts everything the agents they turned loose did while nobody was watching a screen. Salesforce already reports it publicly: Agentforce revenue up 205% year over year, with the seat line holding right beside it. This is a stacking model, not a swap. It changes three things at once: what you sell, what you buy, and how fast a software bill you thought was fixed can run away from you.

February 26, 2025February 26, 2025

Are you leading or just reacting? A look at the systems thinking mindset

Most leaders don’t realize they’re stuck in a cycle of reacting to problems instead of solving them at the source. In this episode, we explore Systems Thinking—the mindset that helps leaders break silos, anticipate ripple effects, and make smarter long-term decisions. From the great toilet paper shortage of 2020 🧻 to business strategies that backfire, we’ll dive into why understanding the bigger picture is the key to effective leadership.

📖 Read the written companion to this episode: ccworld.ca/systems

January 31, 2025January 31, 2025

Seeing the Forest and the Trees: Why Leaders Need a Systems Mindset

Leading a business is like running a control center. Every switch, gauge, and flashing red light represents decisions, external forces, and a network of human relationships. It’s tempting to jump from crisis to crisis, putting out fires. But without stepping back to see the whole system, leaders risk missing the bigger picture. Problems persist, and root causes remain untouched.

Systems thinking shifts focus from firefighting to foresight. It reveals hidden bottlenecks, delays, and inefficiencies. It helps leaders make smarter decisions by understanding how changes ripple across an organization.

My introduction to systems thinking came when I decided to attend an elective course at university. What I learned about seeing the bigger picture and inter-connectedness has shaped my thinking ever since. This mindset has helped me always consider how decisions ripple through organizations over time.