The Future of Planning is... the imaginative leap

Artificial intelligence (AI) eats mediocrity for breakfast. It feasts on the logical, the sound, the safe. It optimises, refines, and replicates. But its ubiquity will ultimately be its weakness.

As it gets faster, better, cheaper, it will create mediocre strategic thinking at scale. This – despite what some will have you think – isn’t a race to the bottom. It’s survival of a different nature. This is a race to the top – where only the imaginative survive.

Great strategy isn't simply working forward from the present. It doesn’t come from just analysing the past or optimising today. And while AI is great at this, it’s ultimately a recipe for the obvious. A charter for incrementalism and caution.

It is also about seeing what does not yet exist, seeing beyond what is assumed to be fixed or agreed upon and refusing to be held hostage by the inheritance of the past. It starts with a vision of what could be, then works backwards to make it real. It’s a dream and a plan. And it lies in our imagination, as it always has done.

And this is where AI cannot (currently) win.

AI can predict patterns, but great strategy breaks them. AI can optimise the status quo – but the best ideas don’t come from logic, they come from imaginative leaps, contradictions, intuition and the ability to see opportunity where others can’t.

Strategic failures are - and will continue to be - failures of imagination. This won’t change. Though perhaps the job of strategy will.

Today, great strategy must go beyond the reach of any algorithm. So, in a world where AI makes everything good enough, only imagination can make the impossible seem inevitable – and that’s what great strategy is about.

In this era of AI, the demand for imagination will never be higher. So, embrace the mediocrity of AI and find the moment where everything changes, because of the imaginative leap.

Tarek Sioufi is chief strategy officer for Grey London