The Broken Ladder

Oxfordshire, February 2026

As an independent consultant, I’ve been using AI quite a bit lately to help me with various research tasks. This is the kind of work I would have previously given to an analyst, but working on my own, that is a luxury I no longer have.

It will come as no surprise that the results have been both really good and really quick. But two things are missing, and I’ve been bothered by the wider implications.

What’s missing is serendipity and perspective. The AI has been excellent at answering my questions. With an hour or so’s work, I’ve got something that would previously have taken a few days to produce. But I’ve only got the answer to my question. I haven’t got someone saying ‘I saw this and thought it might be interesting as well’ or ‘I know you asked for me to look at it this way, but I looked at it this way and came up with a different point of view’. The results have been transactional.

I don’t want work to be transactional. I want the magic of creating something with other human beings. I’m not fooling myself that management consulting is ever going to be high art, but there has to be space for creativity, play and joy in what we do!

And the wider implication is what this means for junior roles when there is apparently a route to replace all those pesky graduates who need training, developing and managing. Businesses might save a few pounds in the short-term, but where will the next leaders come from?

As a parent of two recent graduates (an astrophysicist and a historian), I’m worried about their futures and how they will get the training and mentoring that I was so lucky to get in my early career. And what does this mean for social mobility when employers can pick and choose from the graduate cohort (and will inevitably gravitate towards a few, elite universities)?

Keen to hear other thoughts on this. Where do our future leaders come from when we’ve broken the ladder?