In Jerry Maguire’s memorable words, leadership is demanding that generative AI show them “the money.” According to PwC’s 2026 Global CEO Survey of more than 4,400 CEOs, 56% report seeing no significant financial benefit from AI to date. The mandate is clear: prove the return, and prove it quickly.
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The Global Peter Drucker Forum wrestles with a deceptively simple question: when everything depends on ingenuity, where does it actually come from?
The theme challenges organizations to unlock the next generation of innovation. Yet in almost every organization I work with, the same uncomfortable truth surfaces: the ingenuity is already there. It shows up in a sales rep’s instinct, a project manager’s half-voiced concern, an engineer’s spreadsheet no one requested. The problem is not a lack of creativity or talent. The problem is that organizations have become highly effective at filtering out what they already know.[…]
You are about to walk into a difficult conversation. A team member has been disengaged for weeks. A key project is stalling. You have facts, a plan, a message. And then, just before you open the door, something tightens in your chest. Your jaw sets. You are already slightly irritated, and the meeting has not even started.[…]
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First, a moment of silence for those who have fallen. Then, before the debate could begin, the air raid siren protocol: instructions for what to do when Russian missiles or drones approach.
That was a first. My family had sensibly vetoed my attending in person, so I was there on large screens, at a safe distance, when I served as Intellectual Provocateur at a public event hosted by the Graduate Business School of Kyiv School of Economics.
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Artificial intelligence has entered the workplace in a predictable way: leaders see opportunity; teams feel uncertainty.
On the surface, the conversation is about tools, productivity, and competitive advantage. Underneath, it is about role, value, and relevance. The technical questions are usually manageable. The human questions take more care. […]
On February 3rd, in the historical district of Diriyah, we opened the first Drucker Salon ever held in Saudi Arabia with a question Peter Drucker posed six decades ago: What is the manager’s job? The question has survived because it refuses easy resolution. What I did not anticipate was how sharply it would cut on this particular evening, in this particular city, with these particular leaders.[…]
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Leadership in practice is often reduced to a set of operational habits – communicating with and motivating teams, refining processes, and raising efficiency.
Many organisations stop there. They focus on growth, cost control, or market share and assume that these ambitions provide a sufficient sense of direction. But ambition is not orientation. It creates momentum, not clarity. Even a perfectly run organisation can drift if nobody dares to define, and defend, the direction of travel.[…]
