By George Pitagorsky
October 29, 2026
“We didn’t think of the full picture.” Supavud Saicheua, chairman of a Thai economic council, said regarding the current condition of the Thai automotive industry.1
Your mindset, the way you think about things, your beliefs, and mental habits, is critical to your success.
- Do you think of the full picture?
- Do you view your organization as a system and apply systems and critical thinking when making decisions?
- Do you let your gut inform your brain and your brain regulate your gut?
- Do you seek and accept pushbacks and criticism of your ideas?
If you do, you are likely to use AI productively to achieve your goals. Otherwise, you are likely to use it to multiply the impact of shortsightedness.
As a result of not looking at the big picture, Chinese manufacturers now control 85% of the Thai EV market, according to the New York Times1, and have disrupted the industry. Ripple effects are expected throughout the economy and region.
AI Can Help
AI could have helped the Thai economic leadership build a more beneficial relationship with the Chinese automotive industry, but only if they asked the right questions and had a mindset that let them use the answers, even the ones they did not like.
This article is not about the Thai automotive industry, though. It is about how you can make the best use of AI to reap its benefits.
AI can think strategically if you ask it to. But if you bring a bias for short-term gain and fail to explore the big picture, neither AI nor any other advisor will help you avoid unexpected consequences.
Mentat
Think of your AI companion as an augmented mentat.
A mentat is a fictional character from Frank Herbert’s Dune: a human trained to perform extraordinary, logical analysis, calculation, and strategic forecasting, – a “human computer.” Ironically, in Herbert’s universe mentats existed because thinking machines had been banned.
Your mentat combines analytical capability with access to more knowledge than any human advisor could hold.
Kings, sultans, and emperors had viziers and prime ministers who were trusted wise advisors. CEOs have management consultants, mentors, staff, and others who do not make decisions but take an active role in the decision-making process.
To be effective, advisors must be informed, as unbiased as possible, skillful, and brave enough to disagree.
Now AI joins these ranks. And you do not have to be in the C-suite to have your own mentat.
Knowledge, Analysis, Objectivity
AI brings an analytical mind backed by an enormous amount of knowledge.
It is not free of bias. It learned from human writing, with all its slants and blind spots. But it has no ego invested in your plan, no career to protect, and no fear of your reaction. Asked too, it will push back and offer critical opinions backed by knowledge-based pros and cons.
With the right mindset, you can use it to get feedback about your ideas, offer potential solutions, better frame problems and goals, critique, explain, monitor, stimulate your thinking, assess, and estimate costs and consequences.
Training the Bot
To use AI this way requires that it be well trained.
Before you write prompts telling it what you want, why and how you want it, and what to do or not do, the AI needs to be shaped, first by the AI provider, then (in organizations) by the tech team, and then by the user or their staff.
The AI provider makes vast knowledge available to the bot: philosophy, case studies, science, literature, and more.
In an organization, the tech team makes organizational data available and sets ground rules for behavior. If you are using AI on your own, you do this yourself.
The user shapes the AI by providing practical “training” and reference material.
It is like onboarding a new team member. Explain the context – environment, organization, its industry, market, history, politics, and what success looks like: everything an advisor would need to know about the nature and needs of you and your organization the organization.
Upload documents to give the AI a detailed sense of what is going on and of your style: strategies, plans, financials, market research, meeting notes, articles, and so on. Know your organization’s rules about confidential data and AI use.
Set standing instructions. For example: “Always identify the assumptions behind a recommendation,” or “Challenge my reasoning before agreeing with it.” Notice that these instructions are themselves expressions of a strategic mindset. The way you train your advisor reflects the way you think.
Have a Conversation
Question responses. Correct the AI (“that won’t work because our union contract prevents it”) to improve the advice. Be aware that corrections usually last only for that conversation. If something matters, add it to your standing instructions or saved reference material so it carries forward.
Ask the questions a wise advisor would raise:
- “Imagine it’s two years from now and this strategy has failed. What went wrong?”
- “Who wins and who loses if we do this, and how will they respond?”
- “What are we not seeing?”
Understand Your Advisor
AI tends toward agreeableness, so explicitly ask it to argue the other side.
It reasons from patterns and is not accountable for results. It may not know unspoken organizational dynamics, and it may not sense when people are telling it a convenient story.
Judgment stays with humans.
Your Mindset
“Your mindset” is a critical factor, arguably the most critical. It refers to the attitudes and assumptions that shape how you interpret situations, make decisions, and respond to challenges.
To think strategically, a useful mindset is:
- Curious: question assumptions and seek missing information.
- Forward-looking: consider consequences.
- Flexible: revise your view when evidence changes.
- Systems-oriented: look at relationships, trade-offs, and ripple effects, and at the underlying causes behind isolated events.
- Balanced: let your gut inform your analysis and your analysis regulate your gut.
- Constructively skeptical: use AI as a thinking partner, while validating its suggestions.
- Humble: accept that you can learn from others and that, as smart and powerful as you are, the perspectives of others, including AI, will make you smarter and more powerful.
The Full Picture
The Thai leaders did not lack information or advice. They lacked the full picture, and the willingness to look for it. AI can bring that picture into view faster and more completely than ever before.
But only you can choose to look at it, question it, and act on what you see.
George Pitagorsky
George Pitagorsky promotes optimal performance. His books and articles apply mindful process to project management, conflict and expectations management, and the ability to work and play well with others.
He weaves together fifty years of meditation practice with practical experience in the world of management, technology, training and development.
