Why Strategists Have More to Gain Than To Fear From Generative ‘AI’

To be clear, I am no ‘Large Language Model’ ( ‘AI’) specialist, although I do intend to pursue a course to correct this fact! I have been talking with a number of you, who ‘are’ ‘AI experts, embedded as part of planning groups with the remit to:
“Operationalise the use, understanding and application of ‘AI’ to enhance more rapid pathways to strategic clarity and through it customer impact.”

My topline understanding, if you have several years of strategy experience under your belt, you’ve nothing ‘currently’ to fear from ‘AI.’ It is your questioning, your interpretation, your editorial oversight, your client reassurance, that is still needed. And what ‘AI’ can provide, can enhance your work. And, even if you are a junior strategist, you will position yourself as best you can if you ensure you learn from and how to optimise ‘AI,’ as shrinking strategy teams will continue to re-tool.

How ‘AI’ Might Help You
When teams are shrinking it is a valuable analyst and thinking partner – see Ethan Mollick’s two latest Substack posts about the impressive capabilities of the latest models and how that goes beyond the simple “AI assistant” idea. It can help you consider more options with a greater degree of realism – If synthesis of data can be speeded up, there is greater opportunity to focus on the soft skills/the nuances of customer interaction. ‘AI’ could for instance mirror your biases, used in a focused way, it could prevent reinforcement of those biases.

Is ‘AI’ a Career Threat? It’s evolving all the time, but at-the-moment, it’s a rapidly evolving aggregating machine, that thrives on using data and logic. Efficiency is not strategy. Any work area that requires more emotionally nuanced interaction will be work that continues to be human-focused.

Which jobs will be the first to go with ‘AI’…. Given ‘AI’ can trawl data from the whole web and synthesise it at hyper speed, any jobs that require aggregation and synthesis of information become vulnerable. Data gathering and analysis make basic research and media buying vulnerable.

Which Jobs Are ‘Relatively’ Safe Editorial oversight requires understanding of humans: Strategists providing empathy and judgement and creative directors.’ narratives that resonate with humans. While research can be automated, will it reveal outliers in understanding? The quality of up-to-date ‘in-person’ research will continue to have a role; Experiential Strategists bring together many parts of understanding human engagement and interaction, they will become even more important; Work seeking to persuade individuals or groups where logic alone isn’t enough/EQ needed; PR Specialists providing counsel directed specifically to influence human opinion.

Which Jobs Will We Humans ‘Want’ Human Interaction? (even if supported by ‘AI’) Even if ‘AI’ could do it well, there are areas of our lives we simply demand ‘direct human direction.’ Think human reassurance and interaction (versus diagnostics) ‘is a key part’ of wellness treatment; High Value purchases or high stakes such as crisis management will still require a level of human understanding of human reactions/require reassurance.

HOW MIGHT YOU ACT IN RELATION TO ‘AI?’
‘AI’ – Understand it/Invest in it – I f your employer hasn’t already provided training, do it yourself or request your employer invest in you completing a prompting course – Learning about LLM’s (large language models) and how to get the best out of them. Any great ‘qual’ researcher will probably be a natural, but one can always learn more.

Human Strength to ‘AI’ Weakness – Bolster your human skills: Emotional understanding/empathy, Relationship building skills/trust, Caring/Nurturing skills, Creative appreciation skills, Leadership/motivational skills. Also make yourself aware of evolving AI tools developed to analyze EQ. Consider reviewing https://www.receptiviti.com/

Adaptability Skills/AQ – This is just the beginning of ‘AI’ – If it freaks you out then perhaps what you fear is not ‘AI’ but uncertainty. The greatest bulwark against change, is your ability to adapt. Learn what it takes to become adaptable. Article attached. https://bit.ly/3DjAyCb

Big picture – ‘AI’ has and will transform lives for good and bad! From a business perspective, without being an expert, invest in understanding how ‘AI’ might help your work. Key, enhance your job security by understanding the chokepoints for creating or sustaining revenue and ‘AI’s impact there! For instance, maintaining ‘trust’ in client relationships is key to holding on to revenue and very much a human delivered capability, albeit back up by data/great performance, enhanced by ‘AI.’