The unbridled rise of AI spells mammoth change for businesses, but it is not a crisis.
Technology doesn’t create crises—people do, especially when we panic. The artificial intelligence explosion has left many CEOs worried. Worried over falling behind, over their token usage, over job displacement, over whether their AI investments are paying off.
This response is understandable, but it is precisely in these moments, when we are faced with the unknown, that effective leaders must embrace change as an opportunity to differentiate and unlock new opportunities for their organization.
This should be the goal in every boardroom, and it requires the right mindset.
This mindset is something I’ve honed over the past 25 years, leading five businesses as CEO through the defining economical and technological shifts of our time, from the dot-com bubble to COVID-19.
Here are three intellectual checkpoints that I use to gain perspective when faced with AI-related leadership decisions, and that help me respond with clarity and conviction.
1. What are my company’s differentiators?
What makes my company indispensable? This simple but profound question is the starting point of any level-headed AI strategy.
If your differentiators can be automated off the shelf, it might be time to rethink your business models. If they still hold, focus on future-proofing what makes your business special by ensuring your people and processes are AI-enabled (at least) or AI-first (the ideal).
2. How do I forge my own path?
Identify whether your response to AI is strategic or driven by fear. And be brutally honest with yourself.
Knee-jerk reactions to change might alleviate short-term pain in times of crisis, but they can create lasting wounds that are more difficult to repair down the line.
Consider the companies that rushed to replace large portions of their workforce with AI tools in recent years. They’re realizing that technology cannot replicate the human judgment that differentiated their employees, and are desperately trying to plug a massive talent gap of their own creation.
Conversely, businesses that once considered replacing their legacy software with new systems coded entirely by, or run by, AI agents have, in many cases, hit pause on their plans. Upon analysis, software coded by AI agents has been shown to run thousands of times slower and require many times more cloud infrastructure cost than software designed by a human expert. Systems run by pure AI agents can lack governance, thus leading to improperly tested agents running amok, as well as suffering from hallucination, thus making queries inaccurate and processes nondeterministic. In short, untethered large language models (LLMs) alone cannot be trusted to work autonomously. Not yet, at least.
3. How do I harness AI?
Technology enables change. Leadership and people make it happen.
AI algorithms and LLMs are brilliant inventions on par with the wheel. But, just like a car, AI cannot move a company closer to its goals without the right chassis, software to focus LLMs to a particular task; and the right driver, CEOs who empower employees to harness the technology and deliver measurable value.
To move a company forward, LLMs need a harness, giving them purpose and providing guardrails to focus on the business task at hand. A harness ensures governance, a focus on truth, with a removal of hallucinations, and a focus on determinism of outcome—critical for regulated industries.
That’s also why I’m a champion of the Chief AI Officer (CAIO) role. The CAIO lights the way by shaping the technology road map, fostering an AI-first culture, and guiding teams on their own transformation journey.
Empowerment is as important as leadership. That’s why we set up specialist squads across our business units to drive our key AI initiatives forward. In turn, championing AI wins and encouraging teams to share learnings between them creates a virtuous circle of success and innovation.
Don’t let real hype create unrealistic expectations
As leaders, we value quick decisive action, but blindly following the masses is no guarantee of success.
The organizations that thrive in the age of AI won’t be those that consume the most tokens or deploy the most agentic agents. They will be those whose leaders combine technological ambition with clear judgment and who empower their employees without relinquishing accountability for the course they chart.
The path ahead will look different for every organization, but the mindset behind our decision-making as CEOs must be rooted in the same basic principles: a grounded view on where our business stands today, a realistic vision of where we want to go tomorrow, and a clear vision for how people and technology can work together to help us get there.