Will AI Kill the T‑Shaped Thinker? Meet the O‑Shaped Strategist
O‑shaped thinking unlocks breadth and depth, and wins the decade.
Why the O‑Shaped Era starts now
The problem. The burning platform has never been brighter. AI is a profound, disruptive force, and everyone feels it. Boards are asking, “What are we doing with AI?” Marketing orgs are being asked to do more with less. Some tasks are already automated; more will be. Budgets tighten, timelines compress, and leaders demand outcomes, not artifacts. If “thinking” means summarizing research or formatting decks, the machine will do it.
“It’ll be 10× bigger than the Industrial Revolution , and maybe 10× faster.”
- Demis Hassabis, CEO, Google DeepMind
The economic impact. This leads directly to economic impact. Business models are getting obliterated as tools become more powerful. As people become more proficient, the billable‑hour model will continue to erode. Procurement will start thinking in benchmarks. Time won’t be the clear bar; value will shift to upcoming results, measured in time‑to‑clarity, decision hit‑rate, lifts in adoption, conversion, retention, and revenue quality. We’re very close to this being reality.
As pricing evolves, remember Tim Williams’ line: “Efficiency is the enemy of the billing system.” With marketing budgets hovering around ~7.7% of revenue in recent surveys, procurement will favor benchmarks and results over hours.
What this means for strategists and the talent stack.
So if you’re a strategist, it’s all doom and gloom, right? The quiet fear is real: “If AI can do the thinking, what am I here to do?” A few realities are hard to ignore:
Talent stacks will continue to collapse.
Fewer layers and handoffs will be tolerated.
More people will cover more roles (even if not at a master’s level in each).
And yet this is the opening. The strategist’s job moves from documenting thinking to running a dynamic thinking operating system that empowers teams to work at lightning speed with accuracy. That loop runs on a Marketing Memory Layer (MML)1 , the combined source of truth for strategists, teams, and brands. It unifies truths, proofs, specs, and “known‑good” routes so everyone decides from the same context, the curated inputs and proofs that make dynamic strategy possible. Without memory, speed becomes chaos; with it, speed becomes clarity.
The modern strategist doesn’t just become O‑shaped, they step up as a Dynamic Strategy Architect, deciding what gets written to memory, when it updates, and how it’s shared across agency and client lines. Done well, this sets teams up for real‑time moments of decision clarity, all working from the same context.
The opportunity. This is where O‑shaped thinking becomes both possible and essential. As Marc Andreessen puts it, “AI makes every individual a super PhD in every topic… the most dramatic increase in what economists call the marginal productivity of the worker that has ever existed. Every single one of those people is now capable of doing so much more than they were before.” O‑shaped turns that raw access to knowledge into usable advantage.
O‑shaped strategists operate above the model, make fast mode‑selection calls (automate, augment, own), carry curiosity and taste to turn options into truth, and build and use memory so judgment compounds. As Sir John Hegarty said, “AI is an incredible development that is going to democratise opportunity, but there is a fundamental caveat, AI can get you to a certain point, but it then takes human imagination to take things further and make creative breakthroughs.” AI is the leverage. You are the operating system.
O > T > I: The New Talent Geometry
O–I–T in context. We needed I‑shaped depth when information was scarce and craft signaled credibility. We moved to T‑shaped when collaboration across disciplines became essential and digital work sped up. Credit where it’s due: the T‑shaped idea was popularized by Tim Brown and IDEO (building on earlier uses like David Guest, 1991). Now, with AI multiplying our reach, the O‑shape emerges: depth encircled by adjacent fluencies, made usable by memory and mode selection. Same craft, wider canvas, and, as talent stacks collapse, this breadth‑and‑depth posture shifts from advantage to requirement.
Definition. The O‑shape is that depth encircled by adjacent fluencies, comms, product, ops, economics, amplified by AI. The skill that keeps the circle strong is mode selection: know when to let AI run (automate), when to widen exploration with it (augment), and when to step in with judgment (own). That’s how you stay broad without getting shallow.
If O‑shaped widens what you can do without thinning what you know, the next question is simple: what changes, practically, for strategists, wherever you sit?
What this means for strategists
O‑shaped isn’t a job title; it’s a way of working in an AI era where depth and breadth both scale. Whether you’re in a creative shop, a media team, or client‑side, the pressure is the same: do more with less as talent stacks collapse and timelines compress. The edge now comes from curiosity, taste, and the ability to operate above the model, to know when AI should run, when it should assist, and when you must step in.
AI makes breadth+depth possible; collapsing talent stacks make breadth+depth essential, the strategist’s edge is learning to live inside that paradox.
At the center of this shift sits a concept‑seat: the Dynamic Strategy Architect. Sometimes it’s you; sometimes it rotates. But the job is bigger than shipping a clever deck. The Architect becomes the editor of context, deciding which information, cultural inputs, and working documents actually underpin memory so the whole team operates on the best available truth. This is a move from “best‑in‑hand memo” to an operating system built on memory: what gets written, how it’s structured, and where it shows up at the moment of decision.
Owning the loop means the plan stops being a PDF and becomes a rhythm the team can feel. You frame the problem, choose the signals, and set the learning agenda. As the work unfolds, you decide, fast, when to automate repeatable steps, when to augment exploration with AI to widen options, and when to own the call because the context is novel or high‑stakes. Mode selection turns speed into clarity rather than chaos.
Because the plan is alive, memory becomes the moat, and the craft. The Architect (and, increasingly, every O‑shaped strategist) shapes the MML, what gets saved (truths, proofs, specs, “known good” examples and cultural codes), how it’s structured (taxonomies and retrieval hooks for instant use), and where it appears (inside tools and rituals). The real art is the balance between what you can hold in your head and what you share and instrument so pods can move with you. Do both, breadth + depth plus memory + context, and you create a compounding advantage for yourself and your teams, owning the path from problems to outcomes end‑to‑end.
What O‑shaped thinkers will influence in the next 12 months (and beyond)
A simple thread to read this by: foundation → system → team → practice → boundaries → outcomes. We start with shared context (memory), encode it as living brand systems, equip people to work O‑shaped, shift how strategy is practiced, dissolve old edges, and end with what changes in the P&L and performance reviews.
Foundation (context that compounds)
1) A shared context layer replaces institutional drift. The Marketing Memory Layer evolves from archive to fabric. Truths, proofs, specs, and “known good” routes surface inside tools and moments of decision, keeping teams in sync so judgment compounds instead of resetting.
System (rules that travel)
2) Brand guidelines → brand systems (over memory, above the tools). Machine‑legible specs and exemplars preserve DNA and essence while scaling across AI‑transformed production. Not “AI or not”, taste leads, machines follow, so the system unlocks creativity rather than policing it.
Team (scopes over titles)
3) Fluid scopes > fixed titles. “UX” stretches into Workflow Design; strategy reaches into product, onboarding, pricing, and service. Emerging seats, marketing memory layer architect, brand systems designer, agent craft, signal a culture where more people operate O‑shaped and careers look like lattices, not ladders. In this model, scope outranks title: what you can orchestrate across strategy, workflow, and brand systems matters more than what you’re called.
4) The O‑shaped strategist as architect of memory. The Dynamic Strategy Architect curates what becomes shared truth, how it’s structured, and when it updates, distinguishing team‑wide foundations from personal craft so AI behaves consistently while people stay expressive.
Practice (how work actually moves)
5) Strategy becomes a dynamic rhythm. With a common source of truth, strategy lives where the work happens. It can update, branch, or hold in real time, evidence over opinion, yielding faster moves with a single story.
6) Taste reasserts itself; prototypes become proofs, not the strategy. AI expands option‑space; taste edits what’s culturally true and commercially sound. As Sir John Hegarty puts it, “Data is great at giving you information… but it doesn’t give you understanding.” And in-market evidence backs that: NCS/Nielsen attribute ~49% of sales lift to creative quality. After the frame is clear, prototypes provide tangible proofs for decision‑makers and testable hypotheses for the market.
Boundaries (how the org line blurs)
7) The client–agency boundary dissolves. Shared memory, compatible agents, and a common operating rhythm make collaboration continuous. “Upstream” and “downstream” blur as teams use the same evidence instead of competing narratives.
Outcomes (what changes in value creation)
8) Economics shift from speed to meaning. As dynamic strategy becomes normal, value moves to time‑to‑clarity and decision hit‑rate. Margin hides in latency and rework; memory reduces both while the rhythm prevents over‑production.
9) Strategy moves upstream to business outcomes. O‑shaped strategists operate well beyond comms and advertising, shaping product decisions, service design, pricing and monetization, onboarding, and even operating rituals. Their breadth‑and‑depth posture reframes problems in P&L terms (LTV, cost‑to‑serve, conversion, retention), earning an upstream seat and driving measurable value earlier.
10) Strategists are held to outcomes, not just thinking. As O‑shaped teams gain line‑of‑sight to the levers that move the business, strategists will be judged less on frameworks and more on the results those frames unlock, adoption, conversion, retention, revenue quality. Dynamic strategy and a shared memory layer make impact attributable: you can trace which decisions, specs, and proofs led to outcomes. Expect scopes to include outcome commitments (or pilot milestones that ladder to them), and reviews to center on time‑to‑clarity and decision hit‑rate alongside classic brand metrics. In market, teams using AI in marketing activities report ~+8.6% sales productivity and ~–10.8% marketing overhead on average, while compensation lags reality (performance‑based incentives in roughly half of contracts; true value‑based deals still rare) , a clear opening to tie scopes to outcomes.
Putting O‑Shaped Thinking into Practice
For the CMO. Audit where your team is I-shaped vs T-shaped. Nominate one or two high-potential leaders to pilot an O-shaped development plan, adding fluencies in adjacent domains (strategy, workflows, memory). Ask them to build out the team’s Marketing Memory Layer and identify the key frameworks, documents, and data to include. Set two new KPIs: time-to-clarity and decision hit-rate.
For the Agency Head. Re-shape one flagship account into a pod (strategy + creative + prototype specialist/vibe coder). Create a Dynamic Strategy Architect seat to curate the Marketing Memory Layer for this brand and keep teams working from the same truths. Introduce a 72-hour prototype SLA.
For the Individual Strategist. Build your personal memory layer (frameworks, insight setup, cultural references, trends). Practice mode selection every day, what to automate, augment, and own, and move proactively with clarity and speed. Share your memory and agents with the creative team so they can build and work with the dynamic strategy you provide.
The Flywheel Starts Here
AI is the most disruptive force of our working lives, and it’s here. It will automate the repetitive, commodity work, compress time, and pressure every team to deliver outcomes over artifacts. That’s the burning platform.
The answer isn’t more prompts; it’s a new way of operating. The next era belongs to those who can work with breadth and depth at once, able to reframe problems, go wide on options, and go deep where judgment matters. And it belongs to those who can architect memory into fact: curating what becomes shared truth, writing it into a Marketing Memory Layer, and making it show up where decisions happen so teams move with the same context.
When strategy becomes a dynamic loop, owned by an O‑shaped strategist who decides what to automate, augment, and own, speed stops creating chaos and starts creating clarity. Pods move in pace. Brand becomes a living system. Reviews shift from effort to evidence. The work compounds.
With shared memory and O-shaped teams, in a collapsed talent stack, speed becomes clarity, and clarity becomes outcomes.
That’s the flywheel of the O‑shaped era.