Bhaskar Bateja, Head of Strategy – UAE, Memac Ogilvy.Throughout history, each technological leap forced humans to redefine their value. Industrial revolution replaced muscles with machines, so we pivoted to valuing the mind. The internet revolutionised information access, shifting the value definition to how well we connect and make sense of the vast data oceans.
These were the origins of strategy, as we know it today.
The ability to analyse markets, understand consumers, follow cultural currents and forecast trends to make informed decisions became our differentiator.
We positioned ourselves as the indispensable ones, connecting dots others couldn’t see. Anyone with the word strategy in their job description became an all-knowing oracle, expected to have all the answers. We built our careers on being the smart ones.
Then AI shattered our illusion in seconds
Then came artificial intelligence (AI), gen AI to be precise. What takes a seasoned strategist hours or days of analysis, market research, category immersion and consumer understanding, AI accomplishes in seconds.
The internet, despite its vastness, still required us to decide what to look for, the responsibility of thinking and processing the information remained ours. AI takes even that away.
Suddenly, our carefully constructed expertise feels fragile. The frameworks we mastered, the experience we accumulated, AI can replicate and at times, even exceed our output.
AI brought us ‘the emperor’s new clothes’ moment.
The uncomfortable truth about our ‘strategic thinking’
AI exposes that much of what we call strategic thinking, is just sophisticated pattern-matching based on industry conditioning.
Whether you’re a CMO determining your market strategy or a brand strategist crafting campaigns, we are all operating from the same industry bubbles and the same definition of ‘what works’.
If strategic thinking is connecting dots to find truth, we’ve been connecting the same familiar dots in the same predictable patterns. We’ve become prisoners of our own frameworks, trapped in echo chambers of best practices, proven approaches and category playbooks.
AI only makes our blind spots bigger
Gen AI models are programmed to be the ultimate yes-men, feeding us exactly what we want to hear, reinforcing our existing perspectives.
They give us the answers that align with our prompts and expectations, pushing us even further into our echo chambers. We think we are getting strategic insights, but we are actually getting tech-powered confirmation bias.
Instead of panicking about AI’s capabilities or using it to confirm what we already believe, what if we flipped the entire approach? Strategy, at its core, is about moving from uncertainty to clarity.
My invitation is that instead of using AI to jump straight to solutions, let’s use AI to question ourselves more intelligently. Real strategic thinking should begin with challenging our assumptions, not confirming them.
How AI can actually help with strategy
Making this practical, I like Mark Pollard’s definition of strategy being ‘an informed opinion about how to win’. Let’s examine each component:
- ‘Informed’: Informed by what? Market data, research, competitive analysis – yes. But also, our biases, preconceived notions and industry assumptions.
AI can access broader patterns than our experience allows and we can use it to challenge our perspectives. For instance, before asking AI for ‘what is the audience opportunity’, let’s ask ‘what assumptions am I making about this audience?
- ‘Opinion’ – All strategy is interpretation. Are we aware of the lens through which we are drawing these interpretations? How often do we dig deeper to get to the root of the problem?
AI can help us expand the breadth and depth of our thinking. The trick here is to prompt the AI not for answers but question the answers we think we already have. Instead of asking for ‘what should I do’ let’s ask ‘what am I missing’? Instead of creating a marketing strategy expert agent, create an agent that mimics Socrates or Jiddu Krishnamurti, forcing you to question the very foundations of your argument.
- ‘How to win’ – win for whom? The brand, the agency, the consumer or the society? A CMO’s definition of winning might differ starkly from the creative strategists’, and both might miss broader implications.
AI can help align on collective goals. It can help simulate scenarios using synthetic audiences, for example, challenging and expanding our definition of success.
We need to move from defending our expertise to investigating our thinking
This shifts how we approach all strategic decisions. Instead of thinking of AI as the key to all the answers, we need to use AI to become better at questioning our conditioning.
Genuine strategic thinking is not about clever applications of familiar frameworks but the courage to question the assumptions that underpin our thinking.
When we question ourselves, sooner or later we’ll be forced to question whose interests are we serving, what values are we upholding and what behaviors are we encouraging. The willingness to question ourselves is inherently ethical because it acknowledges our fallibility and opens space for broader considerations beyond the short-term business goals.
The new strategic superpower
Going back to the evolution of human value we started with, muscle -> mind -> intelligence, in my view, our superpower in the age of AI won’t be functional expertise or category experience.
It’ll be wisdom that separates the how and the what from the why.
And that can come only with the courage to question ourselves first. The brands and agencies that thrive in this era won’t be those with the best creative technologists or AI prompters, but those that are brave enough to question their own thinking.
AI will change strategy, the question is whether we use it to evolve our tools or evolve the quality of our thinking itself.
By Bhaskar Bateja, Head of Strategy – UAE, Memac Ogilvy.
