Constraints Breed Creativity: Tey Bannerman on Coding, Discipline, and the Skills AI Can't Replace

What if the biggest barrier to AI adoption isn't the technology at all, but trust? In this episode, Cameron Adams sits down with Tey Bannerman, AI strategist, advisor, and former McKinsey partner, to explore why the companies winning with AI aren't the ones with the best models, but the ones who understand the humans on the other side of the screen. Tey traces his path from teaching himself to code as a teenager to leading AI implementation at McKinsey, and explains why the discipline coding teaches matters more than ever in a world where anyone can prompt their way to an output. Tey unpacks his Four Modes Framework for using AI (expand, compress, reflect, execute), revealing why he forces ChatGPT and Claude to interrogate him with questions before trusting their answers, and why he always tests his own hunches after seeing an unbiased result rather than before. He gets specific about where AI projects actually fail: not from bad models, but from teams that skip the people closest to the work, from search systems that can't understand a customer typing "purple vegetable" instead of "eggplant," and from a fundamental misunderstanding of what builds trust between a person and a piece of technology. The conversation gets personal as Tey shares the AI-monitored ecosystem of houseplants he's built at home, the moment he learned not to trust an LLM's shopping list, and why "constraints breed creativity" is more relevant now than ever.  Key Quotes “Coding teaches you about constraints, and I think constraints breed creativity. When you code, you might have the most brilliant idea, but the code doesn't care about your idea.” “ I have a lot of plants at home. I have humidity sensors, there are cameras, and there's an AI team in my house that actually looks after my plants.” “Are you trying to expand your thinking, compress, reflect, execute?  Every single thing on that list in terms of tasks that people were using AI tools for fell into one of those four modes.” “ The discipline of coding teaches you a lot about systems thinking, logic, cause and effect.  The people that are going to thrive in our new AI world are those people that have those skills.” Timestamps 00:00 Introduction 01:46 The Prompt 05:22 Creative All Hands 07:14 “Constraints breed creativity” still applies in the AI world – your audience IS your constraint. 10:12 The education system teaches knowledge. The AI era demands foundational skills. 13:02 Design isn’t just the output – it’s the process. And creativity comes from lived experience. 18:25 Varying perspectives can lead to good creative tension, producing better results. 20:51 Train AI on your relationships with your stakeholders for more accurately considered outputs. 48:00 "Just plug in an LLM" is not a magic bullet — cost, speed, and architecture still matter. 52:15 All Star Creative Team 55:48 Design Reveal 58:03 Rapid Fire Links Subscribe to the Prompted Newsletter: https://promptedwithcam.substack.com/ Cameron on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themaninblue/ Tey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teybannerman/ Tey’s Website: https://teybannerman.com/ The State of Marketing and AI Report 2026: https://www.canva.com/marketing-ai-report/?utm_medium=organic_social&utm_source=google_youtube&utm_campaign=b2b_dg_global-gen_awareness_pro_wbr_prompted-podcast-2026&utm_content=description-link&utm_term= AI Vision London: https://www.canva.com/events/ai-vision-london/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.