It hit me a few days ago, when I was in our den, buried in some work. I overheard my wife in another room, speaking oddly, considering we were the only people in the house, and I knew she wasn’t on the phone, in an unusually structured tone for a Saturday.

Her voice was soft and deliberate,  almost deferential. I asked who she was talking to. “ChatGPT,” she said, and after a beat or two, we burst out laughing. It was the first time I’d heard her speak aloud to a non-human natural-language model, and because I do it too.

Some quick, informal research suggested that many of us do this as well. As our laughter gave way to a more serious discussion, we realized we needed a name for the phenomenon. My wife went back to ChatGPT to create one: "botcourting.”

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When tariffs hit (or don’t hit and then hit again), the impact isn’t always immediately clear, but the consequences can be significant. One of our consumer-packaged goods (CPG) clients recently found themselves in this tough situation. Their supply chain team was dealing with escalating costs from new international tariffs, but they couldn’t fully grasp how those changes were affecting the rest of the business, or how to build internal alignment around the best response.

To bridge that gap, we partnered with them to create a dynamic learning experience that combined business simulation with AI-powered roleplay exercises to emulate having very challenging conversations. The focus was on helping learners gain a clearer understanding of how tariffs impact a business and what it may take to respond to these increased costs.

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The need for business leaders at all levels to have business acumen skills is growing and has never been more needed than today. At the same time, these same business leaders, who are struggling with their business acumen, are embracing the power of Artificial Intelligence and the support it can provide in making critical business decisions that execute strategy and deliver value to customers and shareholders.

These two things are not mutually exclusive; you can’t simply use AI to make business decisions without possessing the necessary business acumen skills to understand the situation, challenges, and opportunities.

I recently had a discussion with one of our clients who was wondering how we can integrate more AI into our simulation workshops in a way that helps participants learn about the AI tools they can use to increase their efficiency and make better decisions.

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As part of Advantexe’s tradition at ATD, we like to feature a special business simulation designed just for conference learners. Something timely, relevant, and hands-on. This year, we introduced a new experience focused on a hot-topic business challenge: tariffs.

Rather than just talking about simulation-centric learning, we invited attendees to experience it through a scenario that put them in the role of a decision-maker responding to a sudden surge in global tariffs.

The goal wasn’t to teach global trade policy. It was to demonstrate how external business disruptions ripple across everyday business decisions and how simulation, combined with our new AI feedback tool, Simi™, can create immersive and hands-on learning that makes an impact.

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If you haven’t heard the news, the U.S. government is phasing out the penny, which has been part of the U.S. economy for over 200 years. The Treasury Department recently announced that it will stop circulating new pennies by early next year. Afterward, there will not be enough pennies for everyday cash transactions, and businesses will need to start rounding up or down to the nearest 5 cents.

This move is the culmination of a long bipartisan effort to eliminate the lowest-denomination unit of American currency, which has quietly become obsolete (it costs nearly three cents to produce a coin worth one cent!

While this may seem like a minor, almost comical issue, from a business acumen perspective, there are powerful lessons embedded in the decision. Here are five that every business leader should consider:

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