AI Raises the Bar: Why the Insight Industry Must Lead on Better Thinking - Part 2

In the first part of this article we looked at the critical skills that insight professionals possess that put us in pole position when it comes to being at the forefront of providing the amplified human thinking now needed to work alongside ever improving AI technology.

In the second part of this article, we continue our review of the distinctive characteristics and skills that insight professionals offer in the AI era.

We then the outline the opportunity this provides for insight professionals to be in the vanguard of amplifying the quality of human thinking needed in an era where increasingly we will be working in symbiosis with AI.

Loving the blank page

Continuing our story of the traits of outstanding insight professionals brings us to the feisty and invaluable trait of waking up knowing there is something you want to say - something original, something in your own voice, something not yet fully formed but worth bringing into the world.

The best insight professionals are not frightened of the blank page. Often, they love it.

At the heart of this is the spirit captured in the famous line often associated with Goethe and popularised by W. H. Murray:

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

The outstanding insight professional understands the importance of beginning.

Get the idea down.

Then improve it.

Then sharpen it.

Then test it.

Then make it sing.

The mistake is waiting for the perfect phrase before starting. The mistake is letting the process kill the idea.

This is not recklessness. It is creative courage.

It is the willingness to start before all the answers are known. It is being comfortable building the plane as you fly it — while still caring deeply about where it lands.

In the AI era, this matters because AI can help us generate and develop ideas faster than ever. But the original spark, the human voice, the bold direction of travel — that still has to come from us.

Executive vision and intellectual leadership

Another trait that always stood out was the ability to see the big picture.

Some insight professionals naturally understood what we might call the panorama principle: when forced to choose between disappearing into more detail and stepping back to see the wider system, start with the panorama.

That does not mean detail is unimportant. It means detail only makes sense when placed in context.

The best insight professionals are natural sense-makers. They understand how things fit together. They see connections across markets, organisations, people, incentives, culture, technology and timing.

They take intellectual ownership.

They do not say, “Someone else will work this out.”

They say, “If this needs thinking through, I will help think it through.”

That sense of responsibility matters because AI can fragment thinking. It can produce useful pieces, summaries, options and drafts. But someone still needs to hold the whole picture.

Someone still needs to ask:

What is really going on here?

How does this fit together?

What is the wider strategic story?

What matters most?

Where are we trying to get to?

This is where human sense-making and intellectual leadership remain indispensable.

Being careful out there — with our thoughts and actions

Finally, outstanding insight professionals have always understood the importance of integrity, responsibility and kindness.

Long before today’s debates about whether AI is reshaping our values, the best insight professionals knew that thinking is never morally neutral.

Advice affects people.

Strategies affect livelihoods.

Decisions affect cultures.

Recommendations affect futures.

So intellectual excellence must be matched by human decency.

Aldous Huxley, after a lifetime of philosophical reflection, is often remembered for arriving at a beautifully simple conclusion: we should try to be a little kinder to one another.

That may sound modest. But in the AI era, it becomes profound.

As AI becomes more powerful, we will need not only sharper thinking, but better values. Not only more intelligence, but more humanity.

The best insight professionals have always known this. Their work was not just about being clever. It was about being useful, responsible and trustworthy.

The last 30% is where insight earns its value

Improving the quality of human thinking as we work with AI is how we keep the barbarians from the gate of the insight industry.

And there are, bluntly, barbarians at the gate.

They are the people advancing the maximalist argument: why not settle for insight solutions that are 70% as good as a fully human-led insight function, but delivered at almost no cost and in a matter of minutes?

For some fit-for-purpose projects, that may be enough.

But as insight professionals know, the real magic often happens in the last 30%.

That is where the critical, creative and more human thinking takes place. That is where the data is interrogated, the obvious answer is challenged, the human context is understood, the strategic story is sharpened and the recommendation becomes genuinely useful.

That last 30% is what we need to defend.

But we should also be honest. As an industry, we have not always delivered this quality of thinking consistently. We have not always brought our A-game. Some average work has characterised the past.

AI now gives us a reason — and an opportunity — to raise the bar.

This is the moment to re-energise the insight industry around the quality of human thinking. To show, with greater self-belief, flair and confidence, what insight professionals can deliver at their best.

So what has really changed?

In one sense, everything has changed.

AI has transformed what insight professionals can access, generate, analyse and automate.

But in another sense, the fundamental human capabilities have not changed at all.

The insight professionals who excelled before AI brought critical thinking, creative courage, intellectual integrity, curiosity, metacognition, judgement, humility and responsibility to the party.

Those same capabilities are now more important, not less.

The difference is that we now need to deploy them more consciously, more widely and more systematically.

We need to learn how to collaborate with AI in a world of collective intelligence: a world where teams can intelligently offload work to AI, but where no one lazily surrenders their judgement to it.

Because AI can give us speed.

It can give us structure.

It can give us options.

It can give us fluency.

But it still needs the human touch.

The forensic challenge.

The creative leap.

The instinctive doubt.

The ethical pause.

The sense of the whole.

The courage to begin.

The humility to revise.

The wisdom to know when the answer is not yet good enough.

That was the mark of an excellent insight professional before AI.

It may now be the defining capability of every serious insight professional in the AI era.

Of all the possible contenders to lead the better-thinking agenda in business, why shouldn’t it be insight professionals?