Justin Greis

🎤 Wow, what a night! Chance The Rapper was incredible, and it was amazing to see Ravinia Festival come alive and sparkle. Experiences like this remind us of the power of music to bring people together and turn an evening into a lasting memory.

👇 Check out one of my favorite photos in the comments below.

One of the things I love about experiences like this is the reminder that music is more than a hobby or interest; it's a universal community. Across generations, backgrounds, and tastes, a great performance creates a shared moment that stays with you long after the final note.

🎶 And the season is just getting started. Tonight (August 9, 2026) features Hugh Jackman with the Chicago Philharmonic, followed by Brian McKnight & Gladys Knight on Tuesday. The lineup continues with incredible artists like Joe Bonamassa, Ricky Martin, Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlile, Snoop Dogg, Rod Stewart/Richard Marx, Jacob Collier, and so many more.

Ravinia truly has something for everyone. Whether you love rock, jazz, classical, pop, hip-hop, country, or anything in between, it remains one of Chicago’s greatest summer traditions and a place where the musical omnivore can always find something new to enjoy.

🗓️ Check out the full schedule at ravinia.org/events.

🔦 Infrastructure has a way of exposing the things we’ve forgotten.

The upcoming DNSSEC rollover isn’t just another technical update. It’s an opportunity to uncover hidden dependencies before they become business disruptions.

This could even be a catalyst for quantum readiness!

Appreciate Evan Schuman and CIO Online for including my thoughts in this article. A good read for CIOs and technology leaders.

🔭 Enterprise resilience is built on operational visibility.

The upcoming DNSSEC Key Signing Key (KSK) rollover is an important reminder that every enterprise carries hundreds - or thousands - of technology dependencies that support critical business operations. Most run flawlessly every day. The challenge is knowing where they are before they become a problem.

💡 Our Top 3 Takeaways for CIOs and Technology Executives:

👀 Hidden dependencies deserve executive attention.
Legacy applications, third-party integrations, containers, automation, SaaS platforms, AI services, and custom-developed tools all contribute to an increasingly interconnected technology environment. Every additional dependency increases the importance of understanding how business services are delivered.

🔦 Operational visibility drives resilience.
Organizations with a clear view of their technology estate identify issues faster, respond with greater confidence, and recover more quickly. Visibility across infrastructure, applications, vendors, and business processes has become a core leadership capability.

🛠️ Infrastructure events create opportunities to strengthen the enterprise.
Major platform updates, technology refreshes, and industry-wide changes provide valuable opportunities to validate inventories, review operational processes, test recovery capabilities, and improve governance. Each event leaves the organization stronger than it was before.

Technology leaders who invest in visibility, governance, and operational discipline consistently put their organizations in a better position to navigate change with confidence.

Thank you to CIO for featuring our perspective on this important issue: https://hubs.la/Q04qFrXp0

Article title: "CIOs beware: DNS KSK rollover could kick off wave of mysterious outages"

🏎️ Standards don't slow innovation (or at least they shouldn't). They SHOULD give organizations the confidence to move faster. AI is reaching the point where trusted governance and shared standards will become a competitive advantage, or at least the basis for differentiation.

I loved reading Yuri's perspective in Computerworld's latest article on this topic.

🎢 Every major technology platform eventually reaches the same inflection point: common standards become essential for broad enterprise adoption.

Artificial intelligence is approaching that moment.

acceligence CIO, Yuri Goryunov, recently shared his perspective with Computerworld on the proposal for a frontier AI standards body and what it could mean for enterprise leaders.

Three takeaways stood out:

🏅 STANDARDS CREATE CONFIDENCE
Enterprise adoption accelerates when organizations can evaluate technology against trusted, repeatable criteria. Consistent standards help boards, executives, and procurement teams make better decisions with greater confidence. But that criteria should always be the floor, not the ceiling as the foundation for secure and trusted adoption.

👯 SHARED EVALUATION REDUCED DUPLICATED EFFORT
Today, organizations invest significant time building their own governance processes, evaluation methodologies, and risk assessments. Credible industry standards could provide a common foundation while allowing enterprises to focus on business- or organization-specific risks.

💡 GOVERNANCE SHOULD ENABLE INNOVATION
Effective governance isn't measured by the number of controls it creates. It's measured by how confidently organizations can adopt new capabilities while maintaining trust, accountability, and oversight.

As Yuri notes, history offers successful examples of industries that came together around shared standards because the consequences of failure affected everyone. AI has many of the same characteristics. Well-designed standards can help convert uncertainty into informed decision-making and responsible adoption.

Thank you to Computerworld for including our perspective.

👇 Link to the article below

🔎 Find the article on Computerworld: "DeepMind CEO again pushes for a frontier AI standards body"

🤝 A nonprofit structure does not automatically create trust...real governance does.

The decision by OpenClaw to establish a nonprofit foundation raises an important question for the future of enterprise AI: how do we create ecosystems that organizations can confidently build upon?

Technology matters, but trusted governance matters just as much. History has shown that the strongest technology platforms are often supported by clear principles, transparency, and a commitment to long-term stewardship.

I appreciated the opportunity to share my perspective with Evan Schuman and Computerworld on why governance, neutrality, and mission alignment will be critical as AI becomes increasingly embedded in the enterprise.

👇 A thoughtful conversation below for anyone thinking about where AI goes next.

🏛️ As AI becomes more embedded in enterprise operations, trust and governance will become just as important as technical capability.

OpenClaw’s decision to establish a nonprofit foundation highlights an important shift in the AI ecosystem. As AI agents become more central to how organizations operate, enterprises will need trusted foundations, standards, and governance models that enable adoption at scale.

The opportunity is significant, but history has shown that independence and neutrality require more than organizational structure. They require clear principles, transparent decision-making, and governance designed to withstand the pressures that come with growth, investment, and competing interests.

Three takeaways for enterprise leaders:

1️⃣ Open ecosystems require trusted governance
The technologies that become enterprise standards are often supported by foundations that create stability, transparency, and long-term confidence. The governance model behind the technology is as important as the technology itself.

2️⃣ Mission alignment must be protected as ecosystems scale
OpenAI’s evolution from a nonprofit research organization highlighted the challenge of maintaining mission alignment while managing growth, partnerships, capital, and commercial operations. Organizations pursuing nonprofit models must establish governance practices that can remain resilient under pressure.

3️⃣ AI agents will require enterprise-grade trust
As agents become increasingly autonomous, organizations will need confidence in identity, permissions, accountability, and oversight. The future of AI governance depends on creating trusted digital participants, not simply deploying more capable tools.

Thanks to Computerworld for including our perspective on this important conversation.

🔗 Read the full article here: https://hubs.la/Q04pp-FC0

Article Title: "OpenClaw becomes a nonprofit foundation as it seeks to be ‘the Switzerland of AI’"

🎶 One of my favorite summer traditions is spending evenings at Ravinia Festival.

Looking back through some of my favorite moments from last season, I'm reminded that Ravinia is about so much more than great performances. It's about time with family and friends, unforgettable summer evenings, and connecting through the universal language of music. Looking through my photos, there are far too many memories to fit into a single post.

As we count down to Saturday's season kickoff, the anticipation feels even greater this year. The beautifully renovated Hunter Pavilion is ready to welcome audiences, the lawn is lush, and the park is buzzing with excitement. I can't wait to create more memories at one of my favorite places to spend a summer evening.

I'm also incredibly proud that acceligence is a Mainstage Sponsor for such an important, mission-driven organization. Ravinia enriches our communities, brings people together, and makes the arts accessible. Supporting that mission is deeply important to us.

If you haven't explored this year's lineup yet, I highly recommend taking a look at https://hubs.la/Q04p9qB40. Whether it's your first visit or your five hundredth, there's something special about discovering an artist you love - or a genre you've never experienced - packing a picnic, and enjoying an unforgettable evening under the stars.

🤘 Here's to another amazing season. I hope to see you there!

🙆‍♂️ "Human in the loop" only works if the human has accurate information. As AI agents become trusted participants in the enterprise, governance has to extend beyond model behavior to include permissions, trust boundaries, and accountability. Thanks to Evan Schuman and CSO Online for including my perspective in the discussion.

🤔 What happens when the "human in the loop" is making decisions with incomplete information?

Most conversations about AI security focus on what the model knows. The more pertinent question is what the model is allowed to do.

As AI agents move beyond generating code and begin interacting with filesystems, development tools, cloud platforms, and enterprise applications, every permission they receive becomes part of your organization's attack surface.

This week's research on AI coding assistants is a reminder that AI agents are evolving from productivity tools into trusted enterprise participants. That changes the governance conversation.

We need to govern AI agents the same way we govern privileged identities:

📂 What can they access?
🎛️ What can they change?
💻 What systems can they invoke?
✅ How do we verify what they're actually doing?
🔍 How do we audit their actions?

The future of AI security will be defined as much by governance as model capability.

Thanks to CSO Online for including acceligence's perspective in the discussion.

👇 See link to article in CSO Online below: "AI coding tool hole illustrates a big problem with human in the loop"

🧠 Most organizations are evaluating AI by its answers. The next horizon of AI governance will evaluate the reasoning and behavior that lead to those answers.

One of the biggest challenges in enterprise AI has always been that we could observe what models produced, but had very little visibility into what they recognized or understood before they acted.

Research like Anthropic's J-space points toward a future where AI governance goes well beyond monitoring prompts and outputs. It opens the door to richer signals that can help organizations better understand agent behavior, strengthen trust, and improve oversight as AI becomes increasingly autonomous.

I shared a few thoughts in CIO Online's article titled "Anthropic shines a light into the Claude AI black hole" about why I believe this research could eventually influence not only AI governance but also how enterprises evaluate and procure AI platforms.

The acceligence team summarized some of the key ideas below. I'd love to hear where you think enterprise AI governance is headed over the next few years.

🤖💬 What if AI could tell us not only what it did, but what it recognized before it acted?

That possibility moved one step closer this week.

In a recent CIO article exploring Anthropic's research into its new "J-space," acceligence CEO, Justin Greis, shared why this work matters far beyond AI research.

Today's enterprise AI governance largely evaluates prompts, outputs, identities, policies, and tool activity. The next generation of AI governance will increasingly incorporate richer signals about agent behavior, such as whether an AI recognized a prompt injection, identified sensitive information, detected conflicting objectives, or exhibited reasoning patterns warranting additional oversight before an action is taken.

Those capabilities have the potential to reshape how organizations think about:

📜 AI governance and policy enforcement
🔎 Enterprise observability and auditability
🎛️ Trust and risk scoring for AI agents
🔦 Human oversight and escalation
📊 Procurement criteria for frontier AI platforms

As enterprise AI becomes increasingly autonomous, organizations will need more than confidence in outcomes. They'll need meaningful visibility into how AI systems operate and stronger evidence that those systems remain aligned with enterprise policies and objectives.

Thank you to Evan Schuman and CIO for covering this important topic.

🔗 Link to article: https://hubs.la/Q04n-QKW0

I enjoyed contributing to this Computerworld piece on the growing governance challenges surrounding AI meeting assistants.

One of the things I find most interesting about this moment is that we're still talking about AI as though it's another APPLICATION to deploy rather than a PERSON who earned a seat at the meeting because they are trusted, trained, and understand the rules for participating. Those are all settings that need to be configured, and they can vary wildly by person, organization, geography, or topic.

The reality is that AI will increasingly participate in work alongside people, making governance, trust, accountability, and organizational design just as important as the technology itself. I suspect that, a few years from now, AI note takers will feel like a no-brainer, but for now, it still makes many people nervous, and for good reason! As I shared with Evan Schuman in the article, AI note takers are "...simultaneously incredibly valuable and outrageously risky!"

For me, they play a huge part in my daily workflow, but I am all too happy to turn them off and have a good old-fashioned 1:1 conversation.

How are you thinking about AI note-taking assistants? 👍 or 👎

🤖 Today's AI note takers are simply the first AI participants in the enterprise.

Over the next few years, AI agents won't just summarize meetings. They'll extract decisions, assign work, update business systems, prepare follow-up documents, and collaborate with other AI agents after the meeting ends.

In many organizations, that shift has already begun, and that changes the governance conversation entirely.

Meetings rarely stay confined to the agenda. A routine operational discussion can quickly become a conversation about an acquisition, a personnel issue, pending litigation, or a cybersecurity incident.

Governance can't rely on a single decision made before the meeting starts. It needs to become adaptive, allowing organizations to adjust protections as context and risk evolve.

The bigger challenge, however, isn't technical. It's human.

If the governed experience creates too much friction, employees will naturally gravitate toward consumer AI tools outside enterprise oversight. The objective shouldn't be to prevent AI participation. It should be to make the governed path the easiest and most trusted path.

As Justin Greis, CEO of acceligence, shared with Computerworld, organizations should also begin treating AI participants as enterprise identities rather than software features. Every AI agent should have a verified identity, a clearly understood purpose, least-privilege access, clear policies, and complete traceability. Just as importantly, AI needs to be trained. Like any employee, contractor, or business partner, AI must understand an organization's expectations, acceptable use policies, and responsibilities.

The machine-readable workplace is arriving. Organizations that establish trusted AI identities, adaptive governance, and thoughtful user experiences today will be best positioned to scale AI with confidence tomorrow.

Thank you to Evan Schuman and Computerworld for continuing to elevate this important conversation.

🔗 Link to article here: https://hubs.la/Q04nqysG0

✨ Last night was a special evening.

I was honored to be recognized by Consulting Magazine as one of its Top Consultants for 2026, surrounded by so many colleagues and friends I’ve admired throughout my career.

As I reflected on the evening, I found myself thinking less about the recognition and more about the profession itself, a profession I fell in love with long ago. Every major technological shift forces us to rediscover our purpose, and I believe AI is doing exactly that for consulting and professional services.

For a long time, many people thought information was our product. AI is reminding us that it never was. Our greatest value has always been insight, judgment, and trust. That is the irreducible core of what we do, and it matters now more than ever.

I’m grateful to the many clients, colleagues, mentors, and friends who have placed their trust in me over the years. Thank you to the acceligence family, our Advisory Board, Executive Advisors, Consultants, Alliance Partners, and Partners, and to everyone who has made this journey so meaningful.

I’m especially grateful to my kids, who remind me every day why the work matters, not just for them, but for the generations that follow.

Thank you to everyone who has been part of the journey as we build a truly independent, AI-powered, human-centered, expertise-driven management consulting firm.

The best is yet to come! 🚀

Most organizations already have access to powerful AI capabilities. The challenge is turning those capabilities into measurable business outcomes by connecting data, workflows, governance, security, and operating models.

As I shared with CIO Online, "Enterprise AI is moving from a technology conversation to an ex*****on conversation, and time-to-value is becoming the new battleground for competitive advantage."

I appreciated the opportunity to contribute to this discussion on Salesforce's acquisition of Fin and what it signals about where enterprise AI adoption is heading.

Thanks to Evan Schuman and CIO Online for including my perspective.

📊 For the past several years, the conversation has focused on models, capabilities, and technical breakthroughs. Increasingly, the real challenge is ex*****on.

Organizations already have access to powerful AI technologies. The harder problem is connecting data, workflows, governance, security, and business processes in a way that delivers measurable business outcomes.

As our CEO Justin Greis recently shared with CIO:

“Enterprise AI is moving from a technology conversation to an ex*****on conversation, and time-to-value is becoming the new battleground for competitive advantage.”

That shift helps explain why we're seeing accelerated investment, acquisitions, and consolidation across the AI ecosystem. The winners won't simply be the companies with the most advanced technology. They'll be the ones that help enterprises realize value faster and with less complexity.

We're pleased to contribute to CIO's analysis of Salesforce's acquisition of Fin and what it signals about the future of enterprise AI adoption.

🔗 Link to article: https://hubs.la/Q04lxp7m0