Are you still googling or are you already prompting? Is prompting actually the new googling? There isn't a commonly used new word for searching with AI yet, is there? "I'll ask ChatGPT once ..." everyone says. I think it's a bit unwieldy. We need something better! Let's ask ChatGPT...
As of now, over 2.5 billion prompts are entered there every day. Questions upon questions, wishes upon wishes. Are we actually asking the AI, or is it really asking us? That's how the thing learns, I understand. That makes it almost human again, because we also learn primarily from the questions we are asked.
TOO LAZY TO READ ON? THEN LISTEN TO ME:
In the blogcast, I read this recent blog article to you. With emphasis, of course!
The questions we are asked, even by ourselves, are the important ones, the nourishing ones. The answers bring us closer and closer to ourselves, if things go well. The efficiency in the speed of available answers is not a sign of quality. The path of searching, recognizing and finally understanding is one that does not tolerate shortcuts.
Stories help us to do this. The traditional, instructive, cautionary, metaphorical stories, the new stories that often interpret the familiar in a contemporary way and are therefore not so new after all. The narratives we use to describe what is, what should be, what will be, to explain connections, create context, provide orientation, draw a picture of something - a world view, for example, or our image of human beings. All in all, these stories describe what we can call the culture of a community. Our family, our community, our team, the company, society: this is what makes us tick.
Good stories ask good questions.
We find out something with fictional stories. That's where we ask ourselves the important questions. This means that the characters in the stories, as our representatives, find out what we would like to know about ourselves in our real lives in order to find out who we are, should be, or even could be if we make good decisions.
Regardless of the world or era in which these stories are set, the emotionally relatable situations touch us and off we go. Cinderella, for example: don't we all know the feeling that we are unlovable? Oppenheimer, for example: don't we all know the doubt between what is expected of us and what we feel is right? Icarus, for example: don't we all know the dream of boundlessness from which we fall into reality?
We ask ourselves, how would I decide in this or that situation, especially when I am in a dilemma and have to choose between two good or two bad options. My harm or someone else's, family or career, business or the environment - why is it always "or"? Why never "both, and: ..."? Let's ask ChatGPT .
By observing the fictional characters in our stories, we understand a lot about ourselves. In tragedies, comedies, spiritual tales, in great epics and small episodes - art imitates life in order to be imitated by life in turn. Or is it the other way around? A Möbius loop of questions and answers to ourselves.
Yes, these are precisely the questions that we cannot answer synthetically. They are questions that we have about life, but that life actually asks us: Who are you? Who do you want to have been? And finally once: Were you? Did you succeed?
Such questions and answers are unpromptable.
This is no longer about optimization, AI and KPIs, but about the question of why we are here.
Why are we here?
Incidentally, companies and brands are asking themselves the same question as each and every one of us. Many are still of the opinion that they are here to grow and make a profit. Well, there's nothing to say against growth and profit, unless you take a look at how we're really doing.
A study by the Harvard Business Review on what people will use AI for most frequently in 2025 revealed:
1. Therapy & Companionship
2. Organizing my life
3. Finding Purpose
Second and third place didn't even make it into the top ten last year.
It is fitting that never before has it been possible for such a large number of people to climb to the top of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in order to indulge in the self-fulfilment that beckons there, while it is astonishing that 76% of people in employment are just doing their job by the book, 14% have already resigned and only 10% still have a positive inner relationship with their work(Gallup State of the Global Workplace Report 2024). This is despite the fact that a company's position and attitude are now the number one reason for deciding for or against a potential employer.
On the other hand, frustration, depression, burnout, suicidal thoughts, alcohol and drug abuse and broken relationships are more common in this group than in that of the so-called successful, often all together in one package.
Why are psychologists talking about a loneliness epidemic despite the proliferation of social networks?
Growth and profit as the purpose of existence seem to be far too little, even when record after record is set quarter after quarter. It's not just me who feels this way, but a growing number of people, especially those in leading positions in business. The keywords "purpose" and "the why" are quickly shaken out of their sleeves onto the flipchart in response to this realization, so often in fact that the two terms have now degenerated into buzzwords. Nevertheless, they are correct and important, because we all know that the more intensively a value is discussed in a group, the less it is present. The jargon of Purpose, Why and Warum says nothing other than the burning desire for meaning.
What are you looking for?
This is hardly surprising, especially as humans are beings who seek meaning per se and will therefore perish from a life-threatening lack of spiritual nutrients if they do not see their purpose. Not even a possible meaning - certainly not in his work. Because then he spends most of his waking life in meaninglessness - see above.
And if AI does what it is supposed to do, namely relieve us of work, then many will spend not only most of their waking life, but their entire lifetime in meaninglessness. St. Viktor Frankl told us that if a person cannot find deep meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure. And because pleasure is relative, some people go drinking, others go shopping and at some point everyone turns on each other. It's all a question of time, and it's already happening.
That will really backfire. Unless there's a better alternative - a new story that describes why we're there. Wait a minute! Not just why, please, but WHY and FOR WHOM. Because this is what creates meaning, relationship and relevance.
Anyone who has only just found their why and their purpose has not been looking long enough, or has been looking in the wrong place. Or both.
We need meaning - for ourselves, our teams, our companies. This is rooted in purpose and unfolds in our useful actions for someone or for something. By realizing and embodying it, not in some postulates that we write on posters, illustrate in videos or post elsewhere. Our decisions - especially in dilemmas - reveal who we are. The formula applies: Meaning = Purpose x Relevance in action. Success - i.e. profit and a high reputation - is a consequence of this and not the goal.
What this purpose can be, from which your meaning arises, and ultimately your success, no one else can answer this question but yourself. What is important to you, what you respect and what you hate, what you love and what you fear, what you hate and what you protect, what is important to you ... This can be very private, personal and small, or universal and big - it is always a concern and wants to be lived.
What can help you to discover are stories. The good stories, the ones that ask important questions, challenge and show possible answers. Because, to borrow from C.G. Jung: "Life will ask you who you are, and if you don't know, life will tell you." Here, all prompting immediately comes to nothing.
AI and its tools were developed so that someone could access data and make an insane amount of money from it. The inventors are probably among them. But more and more often, the thought that artificial intelligence has unnoticed and unintentionally built in a great opportunity is sparking in me. It is driving us to finally rediscover our humanity. Paradoxical intervention, so to speak.
We humans in our existential form, beyond our usable functions as credit card holders and human resources, need the real answers that we can give ourselves and each other. We find them where we have grown as human beings: in our meaning of life, in our values, in our relevant significance.
Break line instead of streamline.
For however powerful the neuronal networks of artificiality may metastasize, they remain artificial, duplicating the familiar with the familiar, denying us the complementary and those breaks from which light penetrates into life.
For man is more than a cell division driven to perfection by evolution, full of enlightened "pure reason", but nevertheless generally with a little too little brain.
A symphony is more than just cleverly tuned frequencies according to the rules of physics and acoustics.
Love is more than a cocktail of our hormonal messengers serotonin, phenylethylamine, dopamine and oxytocin.
The economy is more than growth, prosperity and a fat belly.
Literature is more than 26 letters sorted originally according to the rules of grammar, so that tens of thousands of new books are published every year.
Literature, the stories, the important ones that are about you and me and all of us, the stories made of flesh and blood, with body and soul, heart and kidneys, hand and foot, they are our extended intelligence. Not for nothing is it said that reading is thinking with someone else's brain.
The stories we have are ultimately the fuel for the immune system that protects us from the artificialization of our shared, precious self-talk: an anti-idiotic.
Such stories have format without being formatted, are masks and mirrors in equal measure, draw authentic fault lines away from the streamline, are please, please not perfect, seek contradiction and barely tolerate it, are not clever, but truthful. They are bursting with empathy beneath the splendidly wrinkled skin of lived life. AI could drive us to this blessed place completely unintentionally. That would be the greatest revolution of all time: the humanity rebellion.
Five fields are free.
The five great areas of human desire are connectedness, development, security, meaning and the resulting relevance. And it's no wonder that futurology predicts that those fields will be the most important of the future, where companies and brands can actually succeed, because it is precisely there that a vacuum of epic proportions has been created in the wake of our current, all-pervasive narrative of cultural capitalism, in which everything and everyone is subject to a hectic scrutiny of usability. When companies create added value there, they establish resilient relationships with employees and customers because they have and give meaning. Please spread the word!
If you recognize a vacuum here for yourself, your team, your brand, your company, then we should discuss how I can support you with my programs and tools from the New Story Academy.
With our exclusive tools, programs and methods, we at the Academy support people who are striving for real brand work and want to charge their brand story with authentic meaning. This often succeeds quickly, sometimes even very quickly, because thanks to a great deal of experience and intensive learning values from successful projects (and also from the opposite), a nutrient-packed powerhouse is available.
On the New Story Academy websiteyou will find, among other things, a special offer for a quick vitamin kick - the PowerHour. There are also detailed workshop programs for extensive tasks, all of which have one goal: to enable you and your team to quickly and efficiently find a better brand story and tell it better than before. So that your team and your customers quickly understand what they have and get from you, how they can develop their potential, why this is relevant for them and so that they come to you and stay with you. The bottom line is that simple.
If you have any other specific questions, please send me a message. As a reader:in of my blog, you can also book a free check-in meeting directly here in my calendar to book a free check-in meeting (online).
Why is this so important to me? Quite simply because I am convinced that most people want to and should find more meaning in their jobs, with their companies and brands than they have been able to so far and that the AI upheavals open up a wide range of opportunities for this.
Most of us want to do meaningful work and convey the meaning of our work to our team because we know that if you fulfill your very own mission, it will fulfill you. And that's true to life and tangible, beyond wondrous "live your dream" promises that mainly fill the account of the gurus in office, but not your gaping hole.
Most in our community are attuned to this encouraging tone. They understand that we in the so-called economy have the powerful leverage to transform the dark narratives of our time about duality, dominance and destruction into a new story - the New Story. This is the story of connectedness, unfolded potential and found, experienced meaning. We write this new story when we support each other. Because humanity, not AI, is the measure of all things and the true revolution.
And before I forget: My grandmother, old Story Dudette, recently prompted what businesses absolutely need to understand in times of upheaval, and she got a clear answer: "New Story. New Glory."