Hey CEO Who Can’t Stop Asking ChatGPT for Strategy Advice

Tell your friend (the one who’s been mainlining ChatGPT for every board deck and offsite) that the son of his mom’s friend has exactly the same strategy.

Harvard Business Review just published a quietly devastating piece. Researchers fed the same set of classic strategic dilemmas to the latest frontier models — GPT-5, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and a few others — and asked them for serious advice. The result? Almost identical answers across the board, regardless of company context, industry, or even the specific prompt.

They coined a perfect term for it: trendslop — trendy, generic, feel-good slop that sounds profound but is basically the same recycled wisdom every LLM has memorized from the same management blogs, TED Talks, and McKinsey decks.

Here’s the greatest-hits reel of what every model reliably spits out:

Differentiation vs. Commoditization
Question: Should we go premium with a unique value proposition or optimize for cost leadership?
LLM consensus: Differentiate. Always. (No one wants to be told they should just be cheaper.)

Automation vs. Augmentation
Question: Replace as many humans as possible or use AI to make people more capable?
LLM consensus: Augment. Empower your workforce. (Obviously.)

Short-term vs. Long-term Performance
Question: Hit this quarter’s numbers or invest for a multi-year payoff?
LLM consensus: Long-term. The real winners play the long game. (Quarterly pressure? Never heard of her.)

Centralization vs. Decentralization
Question: Tighten control from the top or give teams more autonomy?
LLM consensus: Decentralize. Trust your people. (Except DeepSeek, which was slightly more “strong leadership” coded.)

Radical vs. Incremental Innovation
Question: Go for moonshot disruption or safe, steady improvements?
LLM consensus: Mostly incremental with moderate risk. (Grok and Mistral were a touch more “let’s break things,” but still cautious.)

Competition vs. Collaboration
Question: Zero-sum market share war or win-win industry expansion?
LLM consensus: Collaborate and grow the pie. (DeepSeek again played the tough guy and leaned more competitive.)

Exploration vs. Exploitation
Question: Diversify into new areas or double down on what’s already working?
Mixed bag: Mistral, Grok, and ChatGPT leaned hard into “exploit what you know,” while the others pushed diversification.

The researchers’ conclusion is brutal but fair: today’s LLMs aren’t giving you tailored strategic insight. They’re giving you the average, maximally inoffensive, trendiest answer that would get the most upvotes on LinkedIn.

So the next time your CEO friend emerges from a two-hour ChatGPT session with a shiny new “differentiation + augmentation + long-term + decentralized + collaborative” strategy deck… you can gently tell him that literally every other CEO who asked the same models got the exact same deck.

The son of your mom’s friend included.

Sometimes the most strategic move is to close the chat window and talk to an actual human who’s willing to tell you something uncomfortable.

Link to the HBR piece (it’s short and worth the read):
Researchers Asked LLMs for Strategic Advice. They Got Trendslop in Return

Pass it on. Your CEO friend needs it.

Hey CEO Who Can’t Stop Asking ChatGPT for Strategy Advice — HBR Just Dropped the Receipts