Welcome to the second edition of The Sharp End. Each month we’ll cut through the noise to bring you the signals, stories, and shifts that matter most for strategists, researchers, and insight professionals.

Written by Francis Nicholson an expert in Recruiting Insight & Strategy Leaders & Helping Brands Hire Better & Talent Find Purpose.

✍️ Editor’s Note — The AI-Literate Strategist

Last month we talked about retrainability — who companies choose to invest in when AI starts reshaping roles. This month, we look at what happens next: how strategists, researchers, and insight leaders are becoming AI-literate. Not “AI experts.” Not coders. But professionals who can use AI to think faster, frame sharper, and deliver insight that still feels human. Because the edge isn’t in the tools themselves, it’s in knowing how to make them work for you, not instead of you.

📈 Market Signal — From Tools to Thinking

We’re now seeing the second wave of AI adoption in the strategy and insight world:

• Early adopters used AI for speed — transcribing, summarising, automating.

• The next wave is using it for thinking — exploring scenarios, framing hypotheses, testing narratives. According to LinkedIn data, job postings mentioning “AI literacy” in marketing, strategy, and research roles are up 42% year-on-year. Yet few employers can define what that actually means. The firms getting it right see AI literacy as mindset over mastery:

• Curiosity to experiment.

• Judgment to challenge machine output. • Storytelling to turn data into direction.

Takeaway: “AI literacy” is emerging as the new differentiator — not as a technical skill, but as a way of thinking.

🗣 Frontline Story — “It’s Like Having a Junior Strategist Who Never Sleeps”

How often do you use AI in your day job? The answer;”90% of my day, when is the last time you ran a Google Search?”. “I started using AI to speed up desk research but now it’s in every stage of my process. I test hypotheses, summarise transcripts, even draft narrative frames to push my thinking. It’s not perfect, sometimes it’s way off, but it’s made me sharper. It’s like having a junior strategist who never sleeps. The trick is knowing when to trust it, and when to throw its ideas out completely.” That’s how one Innovation Director described their evolving relationship with generative AI. Others echo the same sentiment: AI is becoming the new thinking partner, not a threat. Those who use it well are learning to structure briefs faster, prototype insights earlier, and move their clients from analysis paralysis to action faster.

🔧 Sharp Skill — Framing with AI

If you want to show AI literacy, don’t start by listing tools — show how you think with them. Try this three-step approach:

1. Prompt for patterns — use AI to reveal what’s missing, not just what’s there.

2. Interrogate the logic — push back on its assumptions; make the invisible visible.

3. Rebuild the narrative — turn raw AI output into a point of view that moves people.

Takeaway: The best strategists aren’t being replaced by AI. They’re being augmented by it — faster thinkers, sharper framers, more decisive storytellers.

🌟 Case in Point — From Insight Manager to “AI Translator”

One insight manager at a global FMCG brand described how she began experimenting with AI to synthesise open-ended survey data. Instead of waiting days for coding, she could test hypotheses in hours — freeing up time to focus on the story and recommendations.

When she shared her results with leadership, her manager asked her to train the wider team. Three months later, her title changed to AI Translator, leading internal pilots on how to integrate tools responsibly. The lesson? AI literacy isn’t about learning to code — it’s about learning to communicate.

✂️ Closing Thought

AI is changing what it means to be “strategic.” The best people in our field won’t be the ones with the most tools — they’ll be the ones who use tools to think differently.

👉 The future belongs to the AI-literate strategist.