The Future is Uncertain, And Bright for Those With a Point of View
If I come across one more article quoting Bill Gates and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei telling me that there are going to be mass layoffs of white-collar workers, I’m going to blow gasket! (Here’s another and the gasket is blown.) These very intelligent people see no prospects for other intelligent people.
But I do.
In each period of economic shift, work has also shifted. The tech billionaires argue that there’s really nothing for smart people do over the next 10 years (a time frame created by Mo Gawdat) because agent AI will be doing everything for them. And let’s be honest, in the last 16 months, the business world really has changed. Companies are investing enormous sums of money to build new, genius technologies. They are starting to lay off people. And they aren’t hiring as many college students as they used to. All true.
We are in a transition period.
But it is, to me, obvious what smart people and smart companies need to do. Reskill. (Gawdat thinks that AI will not create new jobs, but that’s because he thinks that the new jobs will be the ones that fit the old economy. He can’t imagine what the new jobs are.) The business models of tomorrow may not need as many administrative roles, programmers, or even marketers. But they will need customers. And the way to get customers is to create experiences that are compelling.
So what can smart people and smart companies be doing right now to prepare for shifts in our economy that are starting now.
1. Remember that your profitability and growth comes from your customers, not your technology. Therefore, you should be thinking first about what gen AI means for your customers.
2. Build a strategy that is compelling—which doesn’t mean what it used to mean. Today, a compelling business strategy requires a compelling strategic framework called a point of view. This is your interpretation of what will matter to customers.
3. Avoid AI hegemony. AI doesn’t really think. (I’m sorry, it doesn’t.) It’s boundaries are set by the LLM that supports technology. Your job is to think outside of the LLM. This is a strategic skill that you can only do with assistance of the LLM.
4. Learn how to build business models that aren’t easy to replicate. And in most cases, the best way to build your model is to lean into meaningful experiences.
A truism ascribed to a billionaire who spent his fortune on superpowers, “when everyone is super, no one will be.” (Buddy Pine aka Syndrome from The Incredibles.) There will be a leveling out of capabilities very quickly now that everyone has access to AI. I don’t know if your business or role is going to be affected by the shifting economic landscape, but I do know that if you are to succeed you will need customers. My friend, Joe Pine, has a track record for getting economic shifts right, and he says, the next big thing to pay attention to is transformations.
What I like about what he’s saying, in the context of the AI-induced changes that are occurring, is that there will be plenty of new opportunities for people to serve people, for strategists to build new business models, and for meaningful work. AI will not create economic value for most of us. It’s likely to commoditize a lot of businesses. But there will be work and it will be meaningful because demand will follow meaningful experiences and transformative solutions.
I invite you to take charge of your future by working with my team at Stone Mantel. Experience strategy is better business strategy. We start with AI and go way deeper. And we are ready for what awaits you.