Jürg Plüss did not ask the decisive question on stage. He asked it over lunch.
The Business Excellence Forum in St. Gallen was over, the keynote done. Conversations at the tables continued, more relaxed, more direct, more concrete. You could feel the impulse from the past few hours settling into people's own thinking. And then, almost in passing: "So what do I actually do with this on Monday?"
That question has stayed with me.
AI is no longer just a tool
In my keynote I asked the audience a question: who in your organisation wrote the rules for your AI? Not the technical parameters, but the values, the limits, the priorities. Who is liable when an agent makes the wrong call?
Most executives cannot answer that immediately. Not a criticism, but an important finding. AI agents are now far more than tools. They write emails, book appointments, analyse customer data, and make small decisions continuously, on the basis of rules. But whose rules?
Anyone who has not consciously answered that question has still had it answered, just not by themselves. The vendor, the model, the developer of the tool: they are all currently co-authoring the rules of your organisation.
Master plan first, skyscrapers second
The answer is not more technology. It is the order of things.
Dubai has impressive buildings. But before the first one was built, a city plan existed: where may you build? How high? What infrastructure must come first? Anyone who skips the plan and simply starts building ends up with chaos, regardless of how elegant the individual buildings are.
Introducing AI follows the same logic. Four questions, top to bottom:
1. What should my organisation be capable of in five years?
2. Where do humans take over, where automation, where AI?
3. What data is available, and how reliable is it?
4. Only then: which tools, models and vendors fit?
Most organisations start at question four. That is the skyscraper without a city plan.
So what do I do with this on Monday?
Jürg Plüss asked the right question. I return it here, with three concrete starting points:
Question 1: Who last decided which AI tools to introduce, and on what criteria?
Question 2: If your AI makes a wrong decision tomorrow: who notices? How long does it take?
Question 3: Do you have a plan for your AI architecture, or are you building the first skyscraper right now?
None of these questions demands an immediate complete answer. But they deserve a conversation, ideally internal, with everyone involved.
Conclusion
Architect or passenger: that is not an IT decision. It is a leadership decision that cannot be delegated.
The most important thing at the forum did not happen on stage. It happened over lunch, when Jürg Plüss asked his question. The next step is not another presentation. It is a discussion within your own organisation.
If you would like to start that conversation internally, I am happy to act as a sparring partner.