What goes into writing a successful pan-European whitepaper? Jodie Hughes shares her insights from the SPACE collaboration event exploring the challenges of navigating AI-driven change.
Introducing a NEW whitepaper: navigating AI-driven change
Over the past nine months, we’ve been co-authoring an exciting new whitepaper with colleagues across our SPACE network – our goal is to create a practical guide for leaders navigating AI-driven change. (SPACE Consultants is a Strategic Practice Alliance of Consultancies in Europe).
Our journey started last Autumn with over 50 client interviews, diving into how AI is being implemented and the barriers leaders are facing. From those conversations, we worked together to identify the most pressing organisational needs and began shaping our core themes: AI strategy, governance, organisational design, culture, skills, and project delivery.
We’ve been testing, refining, and debating these ideas ever since, and on 16-17 June we brought the whole network together in Stuttgart for a two-day workshop to sharpen our thinking. This wasn’t about delivering more content; it was about rigorously testing assumptions, poking holes in our own ideas, and asking tough questions about what leaders actually need right now.
Each chapter of the whitepaper was put through its paces. OE Cam’s chapter explored how organisational design needs to evolve in an AI-enabled world – just one part of the broader jigsaw. Together, we filled in gaps and pushed each other to make every theme clearer, stronger, and more useful.
Grounding the thinking with client voices
We heard from a brilliant panel of clients grappling with these questions in their own organisations. This wasn’t abstract future-gazing… these challenges are already here. No one’s got it fully figured out, but they’re making trade-offs, adapting culture, redesigning governance – and getting on with it.
Client voices grounded the theory and made everything feel more real. It reminded us that the whitepaper needs to meet people where they are, not where we hope they’ll be.
We left Stuttgart with clarity and momentum. The whitepaper is still in progress, but now it’s aligned, coherent, and far more useful because of the challenge and collaboration in that room.
“Client voices grounded the theory and made everything feel more real. It reminded us that the whitepaper needs to meet people where they are, not where we hope they’ll be”.
The AI conversation is shifting – five useful lessons
The SPACE whitepaper will be published soon, but in the meantime, here are five things I’ve learned so far:
- The ‘AI strategy’ conversation is shifting – Leaders are moving beyond “where can we use AI?” towards “where should we use AI?” The focus is shifting from pilots to priorities, and from use cases to business cases.
- AI is everyone’s problem (and opportunity) – It was energising to see consultants from across Europe all wrestling with the same challenges: how to help clients move from isolated AI experiments to meaningful organisational change. We may speak different languages, but the questions are universal.
- Culture makes or breaks it – Even the smartest AI strategy won’t get far if your culture can’t keep up. Organisations that aren’t ready to experiment, adapt, and embed new ways of working won’t just stall – they’ll fall behind fast. In a world where others are moving quickly, standing still isn’t an option.
- OD is having a renaissance – Whether it’s flattening hierarchies, redefining roles, or figuring out where AI agents fit in a team, it’s clear that organisational design is back on the agenda. And not in a once-every-5-years restructure way. This is live, ongoing, and deeply human.
- You can make serious conversations fun – Working internationally doesn’t just sound good on LinkedIn – it really expands your thinking. I left Stuttgart with fresh ideas, new collaborators, and a deeper belief that our SPACE network is more than the sum of its parts. Between debating the future of operating models and dissecting AI agents, we also found time for a scavenger hunt, wine-fuelled dinner debates, and some truly unhinged flipchart doodles!
We’re currently adapting the whitepaper based on the outcomes of Stuttgart and plan to launch it in September. Follow us on LinkedIn to read the key insights as they emerge or contact me directly for further information about how leaders can navigate AI-driven change.
* SPACE Consulting Europe is a strategic alliance of leading European management consulting firms. We help organisations work more effectively to deliver their strategy by improving their behavioural, cultural, structural and economic dimensions. SPACE operates in nine offices across Europe, with more than 250 consultants, for both public and private organisations.
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