What's the most important question right now?

How far should we engage with AI platforms to reflect tomorrow’s user needs, and where do we deliberately hold back to keep even a small degree of independence and self-determination? The tension is clear: high-quality, verified journalism will increasingly struggle to compete with AI-generated, highly personalised content. Strategy work in publishing companies means naming that boundary and revisiting it: What do we leave intentionally to AI platforms, and what do we keep firmly in our own hands to ensure integrity, capacity to act, and brand strength?

What's one fact about AI that everyone should know?

As a strategy consultant, I get to see inside many companies. And in addition to the usual nervousness in recent months, there has been an incredible belief in efficiency regarding AI developments. This made me all the more aware of the findings of a new study by Stanford’s Social Media Lab in cooperation with BetterUp, which prove that the uncontrolled use of AI results in up to two hours of additional work per task to check and clean up this AI content. And this so-called ‘workslop’ not only triggers expensive write-offs, but also leads to corroded trust: 53% of employees feel annoyed when they get workslop; about half see the sender as less creative, capable, and reliable; 42% rate them as less trustworthy, and over a third even less intelligent. That’s not just lost time — it’s cultural debt.

What future are you looking forward to?

A future where leadership makes room for vision again and treats strategic foresight as a core operating habit, not an off-site ritual. That means dedicated time and budget for structured future discussions; a quarterly cadence of scanning and scenario-building; an assumptions log we update when the world changes; and decisions framed as hypotheses and bets. Executive boards examine a range of future scenarios rather than individual plans, which they then scrap again just days after the decision has been made. Teams are measured on learning speed, robustness across scenarios, and the ability to pivot with evidence. In short: institutionalised imagination with accountability, so we build what’s next on purpose, not by accident.