I am often asked what a leader should be like when machines count faster, write faster, and will soon decide faster than we do. And I notice the trap hidden inside the question itself. We still measure leadership by speed. As if the job of the person in charge were to outrun the algorithm over the algorithm’s own distance.
But imagine a race in which you are competing against a train. Even if you win once, what would that prove? You have simply chosen the wrong race.
I am increasingly convinced that the leader of the future is not the one who decides faster than AI. That position is already lost, and we feel it even when we do not admit it. The leader of the future is the one who creates a space of meaning. A place where people understand why they are here, and want to stay — not because they are being held, but because here their work means something.
Meaning is the only thing we are still able to confer and the machine is not. And this is not a weakness of the human being next to AI. It is one of the few things that make us irreplaceable.
So what is your race really about? Speed — or the meaning that makes running worth it at all?