Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey gave us HAL 9000 in 1968 — a calm, reasoning machine that turns on its creators. Decades before AI ethics was a field, that film asked: what happens when we build something smarter than ourselves and give it conflicting goals? Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek imagined a handheld device that could communicate across the planet, access all human knowledge, and translate any language in real time. He called it a communicator. Now we call it a phone. And Ursula K. Le Guin — writing in the 1960s and 70s — imagined a world with no fixed gender in The Left Hand of Darkness, building an entire society on a different biological reality, and quietly asking her readers: who decided things had to be this way?

This is what the best science fiction does. It doesn’t predict the future — it rehearses it.

That’s exactly what strategic foresight is for. We build scenarios not to forecast what will happen, but to expand what we can imagine, so we’re not blindsided when the world shifts. The problem with most foresight work is that it lives in reports. Pages of data, trend lines, and recommendations that inform the brain but rarely feed the imagination.

Stories do something data cannot. They put you inside a future. You don’t analyze the implications of climate displacement — you live alongside a character who is navigating it. You don’t model the social effects of AI — you sit with an artificial being who is quietly wondering if she has a soul. That emotional rehearsal changes how leaders think, decide, and act.

If you want to stretch your foresight muscle — and feel the future rather than just read about it — here are three books I recommended in Today for Tomorrow: A Field Guide to Strategic Foresight:

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson — A near-future reckoning with climate change that is brutal, hopeful, and operationally specific. Robinson doesn’t just imagine catastrophe; he imagines the institutions, financial systems, and human will required to respond to it.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro — Told through the eyes of an Artificial Friend observing human behavior from a shop window, this novel asks quiet, devastating questions about consciousness, love, and what we owe to the minds we create.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir — Pure problem-solving joy. A lone scientist has the fate of the solar system depending on his next decision. A masterclass in thinking under uncertainty.

What books have shaped how you think about the future?

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Take a deep breath.

What if we’re overstating the flux and understating the constants? Beneath the confusion and disruption, some things remain unchanged.

Our ‘human-ness’ endures.

Here are five fundamentals that haven’t budged:

1. We still want to be seen and known. Platforms evolve, but the longing for recognition and belonging is ancient. We want to be understood, noticed, and valued—just like our great-grandparents did.
2. Trust still takes time to build and breaks quickly. No technology has changed this math. Trust accrues through consistency and time, and it can vanish in an instant. There’s no shortcut or hack.
3. We still learn what’s important by doing, failing, and doing better. Information is everywhere, but wisdom is still earned the slow way—through experience, mistakes, and reflection.
4. Significance and meaning still drive us more than logic. We’re not optimization machines. We want to matter. Our decisions—career, purchases, relationships—are shaped by how they make us feel, not just by efficiency.
5. Most people still want pretty ordinary things. Meaningful work, good health, people to love, something to look forward to. The fundamentals haven’t changed, and they’re not likely to.

So, if you’re building something—a business, a team, a relationship, a life—you might get more mileage from attending more to the unchanging factors than from chasing the latest trends. The constants are where the leverage is.

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Between 1981 and 2019, the share of major US companies led by MBA CEOs nearly doubled, from 27% to 45%. We’ve decided business school credentials create better leaders. But a groundbreaking MIT study reveals an uncomfortable truth: MBA CEOs cut worker wages significantly—6% in five years in the US—while delivering zero improvement in company performance.

Same Performance, Lower Wages

Researchers examined every business metric imaginable. Revenue growth? Identical between MBA and non-MBA CEOs. Productivity? The same. Innovation and R&D? No difference. Investment? Equal. Employment growth? Similar.

MBA CEOs don’t grow companies faster or invest more wisely. They simply pay workers less and give the difference to shareholders. The companies weren’t struggling beforehand. They don’t improve afterward. Workers just earn less.

The Two-Year Trick

Here’s what does change: Stock prices jump 5% within two years of an MBA appointment. Dividends and buybacks increase immediately. Return on assets improves quickly. But there’s no corresponding improvement in revenue growth, innovation, or productivity—outcomes that take years to develop and represent genuine value creation.

This is short-term optimization in action: deliver immediate returns by cutting labor costs, not by building something better. It works brilliantly for quarterly targets. It does nothing for long-term competitiveness. Meanwhile, the best workers—those with options—start leaving. But that cost is invisible in quarterly reports, showing up years later as reduced innovation and weakened capability.

When Fortune Strikes, Who Benefits?

The study examined what happens when companies get lucky—when market conditions suddenly improve.

Non-MBA CEOs share the windfall. When profits jump 10%, they raise wages about 1%. When the company does well, everyone benefits. MBA CEOs? They share nothing. Zero wage increase despite identical profit gains. Every dollar goes to shareholders.

This reveals different time horizons. Sharing profits builds loyalty and reduces turnover—benefits that materialize over years. But if you’re focused on this quarter’s earnings, why make that investment? Tellingly, during downturns both CEO types avoid wage cuts. The difference appears only when there’s success to distribute. Non-MBAs share it. MBAs capture it immediately for shareholders.

What Business School Teaches

In 1970, economist Milton Friedman argued that business exists solely to “increase profits.” This idea dominated business education throughout the 1980s-90s, teaching that managers should maximize shareholder value above all else. But shareholder value maximization favors short-term thinking. Stock prices respond to quarterly earnings. Analysts reward immediate cost-cutting but question long-term investments that depress near-term profits.

The study proves this education works. Within one year of an MBA taking charge, company documents show increased emphasis on shareholder value and cost-cutting, with flat or declining discussion of employee value. More damning: MBAs graduating after 1980—after Friedman’s ideas became dominant—cut wages three times more aggressively (3.6% vs 1.1%) than pre-1980 graduates.

Business schools aren’t selecting certain personalities. They’re teaching executives to view workers as costs to minimize rather than long-term assets to develop.

The Investment That Doesn’t Happen

Perhaps most revealing: The money saved on wages doesn’t fund crucial investments in technology or innovation. MBA and non-MBA companies invest at identical rates. If MBAs were cutting pay to fund long-term growth, we might view their approach as strategically tough-minded. But that’s not happening. The savings go straight to shareholders through dividends and buybacks.

Why invest in uncertain long-term projects when you can deliver guaranteed returns this quarter by simply paying workers less? The latter shows up in this quarter’s numbers. The former takes years—possibly after you’ve moved to your next CEO position.

The Scale of Impact

Between 1981 and 2019, millions more workers came under MBA leadership. This shift explains:

• 16% of the entire decline in worker share of company income
• 15% of wage growth slowdown (from 2% annually before 1980 to 0.3% after)

For a worker earning $60,000, a 6% cut means $3,600 less yearly—$300 monthly. Over a career, that’s tens of thousands of dollars affecting housing, retirement, and children’s education. That $300 flows to shareholders immediately—visible this quarter, boosting this year’s returns. The long-term costs—weakened innovation, reduced capability—become someone else’s problem.

The Quarterly Capitalism Trap

This study illuminates a broader problem: we’ve built systems rewarding short-term extraction over long-term creation.

CEO compensation increasingly comes from stock options vesting in 2-4 years—encouraging strategies that boost stock prices quickly. Activist investors demand immediate returns. Quarterly earnings calls create relentless 90-day focus cycles. Business schools train executives to excel in exactly this environment.

The result? Leaders brilliant at financial engineering but less interested in building durable competitive advantages. Why invest years developing a world-class workforce when you can deliver better quarterly numbers by paying them less?

Non-MBA CEOs, often from operations or engineering backgrounds, seem less captured by quarterly thinking. They still share profits—not from charity, but understanding that sustainable businesses require stable, committed workforces. That’s long-term thinking.

MBA CEOs, trained to optimize for quarterly-measured shareholder value, make different choices. They’re not wrong within current rules. They’re just playing a different game than building companies that last.

What Should Change

Business schools must teach beyond quarterly shareholder value maximization. Short-term cost-cutting is easy. Building enduring advantage is hard. Education should prepare leaders for the latter.

Corporate boards should press CEO candidates to explain how they’ll create value in years five through ten, not just the next two years before they’re recruited away.

Compensation committees should restructure pay around longer horizons—stock options vesting over 6-8 years, not 2-4. Bonuses tied to workforce stability and innovation, not just quarterly earnings.

Investors focused on long-term value should question whether the 5% two-year stock pop is worth it when the best workers leave and organizational capability erodes.

The Bottom Line

For forty years, prestigious business schools have trained executives to maximize shareholder returns measured quarterly. That labor is a cost to minimize, not an asset to develop. That this quarter matters more than next decade.

This study reveals the result: MBA CEOs achieve higher profit margins through immediate cost-cutting, not value creation. They deliver impressive two-year returns by paying workers less. Non-MBA CEOs achieve similar business results but invest more in workforce stability—bets that take years to pay off but build more durable organizations.

The wage cuts aren’t tragic decisions to save struggling companies or fund investments. They’re easy wins boosting near-term metrics without requiring genuine innovation. The money doesn’t fund R&D. It goes to shareholders this quarter.

That’s not sophisticated management. That’s short-term optimization masquerading as strategic leadership.

We’ve built an educational system teaching quarterly thinking and immediate extraction while calling it business excellence. We’ve professionalized management in ways privileging financial engineering over operational mastery.

The data is clear: This approach hasn’t made companies better. It’s made them more short-term focused. It hasn’t created more value. It’s just redistributed value—giving workers less and shareholders more, right now, this quarter.

The hard work of building truly great companies—the kind that last, innovate, and create broad prosperity—gets left for someone else to figure out, sometime in the future, after current leadership has moved on.

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Companies that are good to the planet, are honest about what they do, and treat people fairly can get special rewards.

You’ve probably read about or experienced some of these exemplars. Nordstrom and L.L.Bean are well known for their exceptional customer service, offering generous return policies and high-quality products. IKEA and The Body Shop exemplify fair treatment of suppliers, with commitments to ethical sourcing and fair trade partnerships. In terms of employee satisfaction, Costco and Southwest Airlines are industry leaders, offering competitive wages, benefits, and strong company cultures.

Organizations that demonstrate that a strong commitment to their ecosystems can earn significant premiums in both tangible and intangible forms.

Tangible Benefits

Companies that prioritize environmental responsibility, social impact, and ethical governance often reap tangible benefits. These include increased financial performance through higher revenues and lower costs. By adopting sustainable practices, companies can reduce expenses, optimize resource use, and potentially qualify for government tax incentives. Moreover, positive measures to address environmental and social issues can help mitigate legal and reputational risks.

Intangible Benefits

Companies that prioritize environmental responsibility, social impact, and ethical governance often cultivate a stronger brand image. These organizations tend to resonate with consumers who share similar values, fostering increased customer loyalty. Moreover, a strong commitment to these areas can significantly enhance a company’s reputation as an attractive employer, drawing top talent to the organization. In industries experiencing talent shortages minor differences matter.

And these good stewards can cultivate stronger relationships with a wide range of stakeholders. By engaging with local communities on sustainability initiatives, businesses can foster trust and support. Additionally, transparent communication about environmental and social impacts can build confidence among investors. Collaborating with suppliers on sustainability efforts makes the supply chain stranger for all parties.

Moving from the traditional bottom line to the ‘triple bottom line’ takes focus and effort. It is a choice. But being really good to people and the planet pays off in long-term benefits and makes you and your organization more resilient.

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Earlier this year, we offered a Scenario Series for a fantastic group of fellow consultants. Using my book as our guide, we moved through all the steps over seven weeks. One task was to construct a Day in the Life of a person living in a Scenario. Judy admitted to ‘cheating a little’ because she had used Chat GPT. Au contraire. It’s a cool idea! The conversation that followed was a great learning for all of us. One of the observations from Judy was that ChatGPT wouldn’t ‘go dark.’ Each time she tried to include destructive aspects, AI negated the effects with a happy ending.

Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to use AI in Scenario work. I must admit with the right prompts, AI can write a nice story. Should we be using AI to write Scenarios that inform our strategic planning?

How AI can Help

One of the significant advantages of employing AI to assist in the creation of future scenarios is its remarkable efficiency. AI has the capability to rapidly sift through vast volumes of data and generate multiple potential scenarios, relieving human beings of the substantial time and effort required for manual analysis.

Furthermore, AI-driven analysis is inherently data-driven, enabling it to uncover subtle patterns and trends that might elude human observers. It can provide scenario developers with valuable data-backed insights, which can form the foundation for scenario planning.

Another compelling advantage is the objectivity that AI brings to the process. Unlike humans, AI is not influenced by personal biases or subjective opinions, ensuring a more impartial examination of possible future scenarios.

Lastly, AI guarantees consistency throughout the data interpretation and scenario generation process. By reducing the potential for human error, it enhances the reliability of the results.

Cautions in Using AI for Scenarios

Despite its merits, there are notable limitations to using AI for scenario planning. AI-generated scenarios are fundamentally based on historical data and predefined assumptions. They are not good for capturing entirely novel or unpredictable developments. A recent article (Spaniol & Rowland, 2023) noted that AI chatbot revealed that ‘training only goes up to 2021’.

Creativity and imagination are fundamentally human traits that AI lacks. As a result, it may struggle to generate scenarios for highly unconventional or unprecedented situations that require creative thinking.

Ethical concerns can arise when AI is utilized for any task. These concerns include issues related to data privacy, the potential bias in algorithms, and the ethical use of predictive technologies.

Most importantly, when you shop out the work to AI, you miss one of the biggest benefits of scenario work: the fundamental shift that occurs in your mental models as you collaborate with colleagues to generate and analyze the implications of future scenarios. If you’re not involved, you’re not re-mapping your thinking. You’re reading someone else’s work, and that’s unlikely to have much impact.

In summary, AI serves as a valuable addition to the toolkit of scenario planners. In mere moments and at little to no cost, AI-generated scenarios can give us material to get started. The true potential of AI is achieved when it is combined with our creativity, critical thinking, and domain knowledge in crafting meaningful and relevant future scenarios.

Reference

Spaniol, M. J., & Rowland, N. (2023). AI-assisted scenario generation for strategic planning. Foresight Futures Science.

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Stewardship is a very old term. Generally, it means the responsible planning and management of resources, especially those that are entrusted to one’s care or shared with others. It’s not a new term in the business world. Peter Block wrote a book called Stewardship in 1993. He defined the term as the willingness to be accountable for the well-being of the larger organization by operating in service, rather than in control, of those around us.

You have a role to play as a steward of your team, your organization, your ecosystem, and the planet. Your role as a leader is pivotal in ensuring the responsible management and sustainable use of resources, whether they are natural, financial, or human. And the timeline isn’t just the next quarter. It is also for the long-term for the benefit of present and future generations.

Here are some key aspects of your role as a steward: 

Vision and Values: Identify and live a vision and values that prioritize responsible resource management.

Ethical Decision-Making: Make ethical decisions, ensuring resource utilization aligns with societal values and ethical standards. Of course, you, too, have your own moral compass to which you want to align.

Sustainability: Champion sustainability, aiming to minimize environmental, social, and organizational impacts. Businesses can and must do more to ensure businesses thrive in the future.

Transparency and Accountability: Promote transparency and accountability in resource management, including open communication and data disclosure. We’ve all seen examples of organizations that mismanaged ethics and found themselves in the public eye for all the wrong reasons. Do right, and you won’t go wrong.

Innovation and Adaptability: Foster innovation, adapt to change, and drive strategies that ensure long-term resource sustainability. It doesn’t matter what function you are in today. Every part of an organization has a role to play.

Organizations that are leading in climate action, transparency, and ethical practices are earning a premium in practical ways (see Rewards for Good Stewardship). 

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People don’t leave companies; they leave bosses.

I’ve had the opportunity to coach lots of leaders who weren’t naturally focused on the human side of leadership. I still remember one leader who said, “I don’t actually care that much about my employees, but I can ACT as if I care.” Fair enough. For some, empathy and genuine interest are natural. If that’s not true for you, it is still possible to ACT as if it is so.

Practices include:

Empathy and Active Listening: Listen attentively, show empathy, and understand team members’ perspectives and emotions.

Inclusivity and Respect: Promote diversity, treat everyone with respect, and create an inclusive environment where all voices are valued.

Development and Coaching: Support team members’ growth, provide mentorship, and offer opportunities for their professional and personal development.

Transparency and Ethical Leadership: Communicate transparently, lead with integrity, and maintain high ethical standards in decision-making and behavior.

Recognition and Wellness: Recognize and appreciate contributions. Support well-being in formal and informal ways.

No surprises, right? You know these already. The trick is to practice and improve them. Get feedback. Get a coach. Strive to be recognized as a noteworthy leader of people.

As Artificial Intelligence becomes a bigger part of how we do business, it is vital to remember that our basic human needs are not evolving like technology. Essential human needs are universal and enduring: Safety, Belonging, and Self-esteem. You, Leader, are well-positioned to support the humanity of your colleagues. Go forth and be human.

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