Everyone is talking about AI.
Christophe Mostert talks about data.
That was probably the biggest surprise of our conversation.
For nearly three decades, Christophe has been guiding major transformation projects in aviation, logistics, and infrastructure with M2P. He has seen airports, accompanied airlines, and introduced systems that must function around the clock.
I expected a conversation about artificial intelligence.
Instead, he spoke about something far more fundamental.
Digitalization is not new.
Only the marketing is new.
During our conversation, Christophe had to smile more than once.
Today, every company suddenly seems to need to do AI.
Boards ask for AI strategies.
Consultancies present slides.
Start-ups promise revolutions.
But for Christophe, that is not the real challenge.
"We haven't even finished digitalization yet. And now everyone is already talking about AI."
That sentence stuck with me.
Bad data does not get better through AI.
One of the most compelling moments of our conversation was a seemingly trivial example.
The ETA.
The Estimated Time of Arrival.
Everyone knows it.
But Christophe asked a simple question:
What does ETA actually mean?
Is it the airline's calculation?
The forecast from Flightradar?
The information from air traffic control?
Or the time used internally by an airport?
Everyone calls it ETA.
But they often mean something entirely different.
"Now you feed this information into AI. But which of them is actually correct?"
This is exactly where the real problem begins.
Not with the AI.
But with the data.
AI needs order.
Not magic.
Christophe articulated something I now hear in almost every conversation.
Many companies believe AI can solve their problems.
Yet the foundations are often missing.
Data quality.
Clear terminology.
Standards.
Governance.
Without this foundation, artificial intelligence remains exactly that:
a probability machine.
It produces answers.
But not reliable decisions.
"Without clean data, the entire AI discussion is garbage."
That sounds harsh.
But that is precisely why I found the statement so important.
Operations is still a people business.
The longer we talked, the clearer another thought became.
Transformation rarely fails because of software.
It fails because of organizations.
Because of politics.
Because of unclear responsibilities.
Because of a lack of trust.
Christophe spoke of projects in which millions were invested.
Not because the technology was poor.
But because wrong decisions were made.
Or because no one was willing to take responsibility.
That reminded me of many implementations I have experienced myself.
It was not the systems that were difficult.
But everything that happened between people.
Good consultants don't implement software.
They guide people.
One statement from Christophe describes M2P's way of working particularly well.
He said that successful implementations always emerge where consultants work alongside operational teams.
Not from the conference room.
But in the warehouse.
At the airport.
Where the work actually happens.
"We go on the journey together with the people."
That is precisely what distinguishes transformation from PowerPoint.
The future does not belong to AI.
But to orchestration.
Of course, we also talked about artificial intelligence.
Interestingly, Christophe does not see its greatest strength in making individual decisions.
But in orchestrating complex operations.
Not in replacing individual optimization algorithms.
But in making them work together.
In doing so, he is essentially describing a future in which AI does not replace humans.
But makes complexity manageable.
What I take away from this conversation
Many people today talk about what AI might one day be capable of.
Christophe talks about why many companies do not yet even properly understand their own data.
That may initially seem less spectacular.
But it is probably far more important.
Because perhaps digitalization does not begin with artificial intelligence at all.
But with a much simpler question:
Do we actually understand our own operational reality?
After this conversation, I am convinced: