Have you seen that viral video where a dad asks his kids to write step-by-step instructions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?

If you haven’t, it’s worth a quick watch:

The premise is super simple. The kids write down steps like “put the peanut butter on the bread.” So the dad takes the closed jar of peanut butter and physically places the whole jar right on top of a slice of bread.

The kids scream, “No! Open the jar and spread it with a knife!”

So he opens the jar, takes the knife, and rubs the handle covered in peanut butter onto the loaf.

It is hilarious, but if you work in agency strategy, it also hits a little too close to home.

The dad isn’t being difficult; he’s just following their instructions literally. He is acting like a computer program. And honestly, that is exactly how Generative AI works today.

Why Does AI Give Generic Strategy Answers?

Working in a global advertising and marketing agency, I’ve been thinking a lot about where strategists fit in this new AI-driven landscape.

There is a common worry floating around our industry: Will AI replace agency strategists?

Personally, I don’t think so. But I do think AI is holding up a giant mirror to the quality of our briefs.

When we type a quick, vague prompt into an AI tool and get back a generic, boring response, our immediate reaction is often: “See? AI isn’t that smart. It can’t replace real strategy.”

But if we are honest with ourselves… did we give it a good instruction, or did we just tell it to “put peanut butter on the bread”?

AI models don’t know your client’s business context unless you feed it. They don’t know the quiet human tension behind a campaign unless you articulate it. They don’t know what “good” looks like unless you define the constraints.

If we give AI a lazy, broad prompt, we get back a generic, surface-level answer. Garbage in, garbage out.

What Is AI’s True Role in Strategy?

I don’t look at AI as something that will do the core strategy for us. Strategy requires human empathy, cultural intuition, and the ability to connect dots that shouldn’t make sense on paper. AI doesn’t have a heart or a gut feeling.

Instead, think of AI as a strategy companion.

It’s like having a super fast, tireless junior researcher sitting next to you. It can help you:

• Poke holes in logic: Identify missing assumptions in campaign hypotheses.
• Brainstorm alternative angles: Explore unconventional audience archetypes quickly.
• Organize unstructured data: Synthesize qualitative research notes in seconds.
• Internet fueled out of box thinking: Share with us things we have not thought about.

But for any strategic companion to be helpful, you have to talk to it clearly. This brings us back to the core craft of a great strategist: precision briefing.

How to Practice Precision Briefing for AI Prompts

In agency life, writing a brief has always been an art form. The best briefs aren’t long, bloated documents filled with corporate jargon. The best briefs are simple, razor-sharp, and painfully clear. They make the complex simple.

And now, with AI in our daily workflow, prompting is simply briefing in a new medium.

Here is the difference between a generic prompt and a precision brief:

• Generic Prompt: “Give me target audience insights for young adults buying running shoes.”
• Precision Brief: “We are looking at urban working adults aged 22–28 who feel guilty about spending money on premium running shoes because they only run twice a week. What are the emotional barriers stopping them, and what quiet motivations make them feel justified in buying?”

When you brief AI with that level of context, nuance, and constraint, the output stops feeling like a Wikipedia summary. It starts feeling like a genuine spark for deeper human insight.

Key Takeaways for Agency Strategists

• Prompting IS Briefing: Prompting isn’t a technical coding skill; it’s an exercise in clear thinking and exact language.
• AI as a Strategy Companion: AI works best as a collaborative sounding board, not an automated strategist.
• Precision In, Clarity Out: The quality of AI output directly reflects the precision of the context and constraints provided in your prompt.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Strategic Craft

Technology changes every few years. Yesterday it was social algorithms, today it’s generative AI, and tomorrow it will be something else entirely.

We don’t need to fear these tools, nor should we expect them to do the heavy lifting for us.

Instead, let’s use this moment to get back to the fundamentals of good strategy: clear thinking, sharp observation, and simple communication.

Let’s practice writing better briefs—not just for our creative teams, but for our AI companions too. The clearer we can express what we are looking for, the better our tools can help us, and the better our final work will be for our clients and teams.

Keep practicing, keep prompting, and let’s keep sharpening our craft together.

If you work in an office, you have probably seen this before:

Someone spends ten minutes reading a quick summary, then presents an idea with total confidence. Senior managers are busy and want fast answers, so they believe this person right away because they sound so sure.

At the same time, the real experts sit quietly with their heads down. They stay quiet not because they are clueless, but because they know the topic is complicated. They know there is always more to learn, so they keep working hard and trying to solve the real problems.

Psychologists call this the Dunning–Kruger Effect.

It means people with very little skill often think they are experts because they do not know enough to see their own mistakes. On the other hand, real experts are usually humble. The more you learn, the more you realize how much you still do not know.

In many companies, this creates two big problems:

1. Loud confidence gets mistaken for real skill. Managers rarely have time to check all the details, so they assume someone who sounds confident must be doing good work.
2. Quiet doers get ignored. Smart workers assume that good results speak for themselves. But in a noisy room, good results rarely get noticed… they get drowned out by loud talkers.

Why Promoting Your Work Is Not Evil

A lot of smart, quiet people hate talking about their achievements. They feel like it is just fake bragging or playing dirty office politics.

But sharing your work is not about bragging. It is about helping your team make good decisions.

If the smartest people stay quiet, the lease knowledgeable people take control. That is bad for you, and it leads to bad decisions for the whole company.

How to Deal with It in a Positive Way

It is frustrating to watch loud, empty talk get rewarded. But getting angry does not change anything. Here is a better way to look at it:

1. Understand that managers have limits. Bosses are not trying to be unfair; they are just busy and stressed. They like simple, confident answers because it saves them time.
2. Explain big ideas simply. You do not need to brag. True skill means taking a complicated problem and explaining it in plain, easy choices.
3. Play the long game. Loud talkers cannot hide forever. When real problems happen, empty promises fall apart. Real skills and consistent hard work build a solid reputation over time.

So what…

The Dunning–Kruger effect is just a part of human nature. If we are being honest, we have all acted like experts on things we barely knew at some point!

Instead of feeling defeated by loud people at work, use it as a reminder. Doing good work is step one. Step two is speaking up clearly so your team can focus on what actually matters.

Quiet competent continuous learners aren’t losing, they’re just figuring out how to contribute with integrity.

We tend to think the smartest and most intelligent people have the highest IQ and are the wisest. We tend to view wisdom as a high-level cognitive skill, an intellectual destination you reach if you just read enough books or have enough life experience, however we get a rude awakening when realise for a fact that the smartest people might not be the wisest.

This week I re-read this ancient principle in Psalm 111:10 that completely flips this assumption on its head:

When you strip away the religious language, this isn’t a call to live in terror. In Hebrew, yir’ah refers to profound reverence and awe, the simple realization that you are not the center of the universe and actually in the grand scheme of things, we might be really small and ignorant.

And from a practical, human perspective, that single mindset shift changes everything.

Reverence Frees You From Petty Anxiety

I remember lying down on the ground at night with Pearl at a farm stay in the mid 90s in Australia when we were dating and looking up at the milky way and for the first time felt like a tiny dot as we were just these specks of matter in between our planet and the vast universe.

Human beings are wired for awe. If we don’t anchor ourselves to something infinite and vast, we end up living in awe of finite things: public opinion, career standing, social status, or the exhausting effort to keep every variable of our lives under control.

When you hold ultimate reality in proper reverence, your daily anxieties shrink down to their actual size. The fear of failure, the fear of missing out, or the need for constant validation lose their grip. A healthy sense of awe doesn’t shrink your world; it grounds you so you can step outside your own ego.

Suddenly our perspective change and what seems important in our daily lives, don’t feel so important anymore.

You Can’t Think Your Way Into Wisdom—You Live Into It

The second half of carries a subtle practicality : “… all those who practice it have a good understanding”.

Our modern default is to wait until we fully understand something before we commit to action. We want the full breakdown, the data proof, and the mental model upfront. But human character doesn’t work that way. Insight is often a feedback loop that only starts after you take the step.

You don’t think your way into wise living; you live your way into wise thinking. Generosity only makes sense once you start giving. Lessons only feel real after mistakes were made. Integrity only reveals its real value when it costs you something. Action isn’t just the output of wisdom, it’s the lens that unlocks it.

The Bottom Line

At its core, I feel wisdom isn’t about IQ, it’s a realisation and an alignment.

The moment we stop trying to dictate reality and start aligning with what is true, good, and larger than ourselves, true clarity begins.