Met AI wordt strategie socialer

"Used with intellect and feeling, AI does not make a strategy process less social, but rather more so. It becomes even more an activity of people, with people, for people. An activity in which there is more and more room for the conversation about interests, legitimacy, positioning, differentiation and objectives."

When I slid into the lecture halls in 1997 to study business administration at Erasmus University, we were told in the first lecture that business administration is a social science. Unlike mathematics, economics or philosophy, which were classified as "exact", business administration placed human behaviour at the centre. Business administration, and within it the field of strategy, would revolve around the interaction between people, departments, markets and communities. Of course, we were immediately introduced to the importance of context, because every issue plays out in a context. But even that context was an intersubjective reality. In other words, an interpretation by people, which was moreover not static.

My belief in malleability

I have to admit honestly that I got on the metro at Kralingse Zoom feeling rather disappointed. Until then I had the idea that science was the domain of logic and rationality. That I was going to discover regularities, learn how to apply success formulas and, later, help companies develop strategy. Not just any strategy, but the best strategy and the only correct strategy. Despite the insights I gained during my studies in the areas of sociology and social psychology, I remained a real blueprint thinker. I was always busy with analyses, models and boxes to turn data into information and then make the right choices. After all, if I derived the only correct strategy, surely it was logical that it would be accepted and implemented straight away?

The value of scenarios

After my studies I went to work for EY as a consultant. There I received questions from clients about the longer term, about positioning and robust choices. That really got me thinking. I immersed myself in the field that is nowadays called foresight. I contacted Ewald Breunesse of Shell so that he could tell me everything about scenario planning. For my clients at the time, I developed scenarios in great detail, complete with a probability calculated to the decimal point and change indicators to monitor. I found the work important and inspiring. I could only half appreciate Arie de Geus's statement that "the reliability of scenarios is less important than the types of conversation they spark". Because if the scenarios were reliable, surely the strategic direction for the organisation was a simple fill-in exercise?

The power of conversations

I have had a lot of fun carrying out scenario explorations for all kinds of companies, sectors and cities. It was instructive and intellectually challenging to think through trends and uncertainties in terms of implications, and then to translate those implications back into strategic options and future-proof choices. In all those meetings I began to appreciate De Geus's remark more and more. I realised that talking about context scenarios was more important than the scenarios themselves. The future scenarios actually provided language to make the assumptions of executives about the future explicit and discussable, and in this way to create a shared future reality. A reality that was recognised and taken seriously. A reality that could serve as a basis for choices. I sometimes thought back to my studies and the fact that the context of every problem was an intersubjective reality. Let me put it this way: what I had always understood rationally, I now also began to feel.

From blueprint thinker to process consultant

By the time I founded Jester Strategy, I was won over. I no longer believed at all in the large consulting firms that calculated what their clients had to do on the basis of facts, figures and analyses. Clients who then often had to hire another firm to interpret the new strategy and get it off the page. Together with my colleagues from day one, I worked on an approach to strategy processes in which the emphasis was on informed conversations between top management and stakeholders of companies. Conversations aimed at exploring the context, getting to know each other and choosing a well-considered positioning for the company together. Conversations also to work out the strategy, dovetail it and decide together how high to set the bar. Within Jester, the role of the consultant grew into that of process facilitator, who challenges and uses creative formats to facilitate the conversation and bring it to a strategy with broad support. In 2020 we christened our approach the Strategy CUBE and wrote the book Ready for the Future, in which our thinking is set out.

Strategy is becoming ever more social

By now we have made many strategies, especially for companies, but also for the larger non-profits. In every process we brought conversations about. Between executives. Between executives and supervisory board members. Between executives, supervisory board members and stakelyolders. As a foundation for these conversations we initially did primarily research. That emphasis quickly shifted to desk research and later we increasingly carried out our analysis "live", in strategy sessions with lots of tape and Post-its. We noticed that this allowed us to make more and more impact. More important than just understanding the strategy was feeling it. More important than just knowing what you had to do was team spirit and mutual connection. Strong teams became more ambitious and more impactful.

AI as catalyst

When I drove home last Friday after a strategy session with a large professional services firm, I realised that we are already firmly in a new era, but that De Geus's laws have not changed. Every executive brought in their own future scenarios via AI. That enormously enriched the conversation. AI helped to bring implicit assumptions to the surface, and to think scenarios through in terms of strategic impact, live, in the session. What I saw was how AI raised the pace and the depth. We could shift immediately to the questions that came up in the session. One executive, for example, wondered what a shrinking labour market would mean for the company's proposition. Within seconds, AI offered different angles, examples from other sectors and possible solution directions. Not as truth, but as a conversation starter. AI thus became a kind of extra participant, one that does not judge but can quickly provide context, opens up perspectives and accelerates the collective thinking process. It led to more focus on what really matters: shared language, shared images and joint choices. Together with clever working formats, AI ensured that it became a real working session. A session in which executives tinkered with language, a joint picture and choices. A session, moreover, in which conclusions were drawn instead of formulating further probing questions.

The future of strategy is social

I drove home cheerfully that Friday. The dynamic of the workshop was excellent. I concluded that AI is a blessing for the advisory profession because it frees the consultant from the analytical and computational drudgery. The data cruncher, the report writer, the model builder: their roles are becoming ever smaller. What remains is the essence of the profession: facilitating meaningful conversations. AI thus becomes a powerful instrument in the hands of the process consultant. A smart sidekick that helps to get to the heart of the matter faster, to put forward different future images, to think them through and discuss them and to translate them into an impactful and distinctive strategy.

Used with intellect and feeling, AI does not make a strategy process less social, but rather more so. It becomes even more an activity of people, with people, for people. An activity in which there is more and more room for the conversation about interests, legitimacy, positioning, differentiation and objectives. An activity in which quality and substantiation are not up for debate and the emphasis is on support and understanding. Strategy thus becomes more human and more meaningful. It stimulates not only cognitively but also emotionally. In other words, AI gives business administration the means to become the ultimate social science.

I am Michiel de Vries, co-owner of Jester Strategy. I am a strategist and consultant, and I am in the phase of my career in which I enjoy reflecting on my work.