Category: strategy
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The Clown and the Editor in Creative and Strategy Workflows
It being the end of one year and the start of another I wanted to use this as an opportunity to pull together several strands that have dominated my thinking over the last 12 months notably the heightened value of critical thinking
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What comes after LLMs?
Last week I wrote about the fundamental differences in the way that large language models and humans learn, and I noted that many of these differences speak to some integral limitations of text-based language models. This is particularly true when thinking about where AI
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The differences between how LLMs and humans learn
I’m not a technical AI expert but I have tried hard to learn more about how LLMs work, mostly so that I can better understand the role that AI can play, its potential and its (current) limitations, and how humans can best
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Why systems beat goals
When I wrote my first book about agility and business transformation I wrote about the idea that in leading change, systems beat goals. It’s a principle that I keep coming back to, both in my transformation work with businesses and in a personal context
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AI Transformation and ROI: Bottom-up trap, top-down fantasy
Last week I was asked to take part in a Cambridge Judge Business School panel on AI transformation. It was a pretty wide ranging discussion but there was a useful lens on this given by the latest McKinsey State of AI 2025 report which
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The Future of Agencies in the Age of AI
Last week I spoke at the Google Partner Summit in Dublin about managing agency change in the era of AI, and then moderated a panel of exceptional agency leaders including Pats McDonald, Christina Lemieux, and Liam Wade. In my talk I spoke about the need to combine
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Systems and Empathy
Way back in 2017 (crikey) I wrote a report for the IPA on the Future of Agencies. One of the key frameworks that I used described how agencies could succeed in the future by focusing on combining systems (which I defined as data,
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The Future of Strategists and Planners
The latest WARC Future of Strategy report is just out and makes for interesting reading. 80% of strategists think the discipline is at a crossroads. Agency jobs in decline, and yet client demand for strategy skills needed more than ever in a volatile world.
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The Future of Strategy in the Age of AI
A couple of weeks ago I ran a session with a large agency strategy team focusing on integrating AI throughout the planning workflow. It reminded me of how much I love working with strategists – naturally curious and open people. Towards the
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Think-prompt-think
In 1995, McArthur Wheeler walked into two Pittsburgh banks in broad daylight and robbed them with his face uncovered. When police arrested him hours later using surveillance footage, Wheeler was genuinely shocked. He’d rubbed lemon juice on his face (the same substance