Q46　What Abilities Do Leaders Need in the AI Era?

The Short Answer

The power to create expectation for the future.

Unpacking the Question

What abilities do leaders need in the AI era?
In sheer knowledge, we can no longer beat AI.
In speed of analysis, we cannot win either.
In gathering information and presenting optimal options,
AI will outperform us in more and more situations.
So what should leaders do?
Even so, there are things only leaders can do.
That is to paint the future we aim for and say, "Let's go this way."
People do not move on correct answers alone.
Nor on numbers alone.
"I want to create the future with this person."
Only when people feel that does the courage to take on a challenge emerge.
So what a leader needs is not to know all the answers.
It is to believe in a future no one else can yet see,
and to be able to tell that future to their allies.
AI can present options for the future.
But it cannot decide which future to choose.
That decision carries values.
It carries Purpose.
And it carries responsibility for the future.
Future Value Theory holds that a leader's power is the power to create expectation for the future.
When expectation for the future is born,
people gather,
capital gathers,
and challenges begin.
The leader most needed in the AI era is not the person with the most knowledge.
It is the person who can give the most people hope for the future.

Implications for Management

In the AI era, leaders shift from being the ones who hold answers to the ones who show the future.
The leader's role is not to judge everything, but to make clear where the organization is headed.
A leader's value lies in whether they can present a vision that makes employees think, "I want to take on this challenge for that future."

How Would You Answer?

Are you giving the people around you
answers?
Or are you showing them a future that makes them think, "I want to go there"?