I watched a CEO fire 300 people last month using an AI recommendation engine.
Clean. Efficient. Optimized for cost savings. Three weeks later, his remaining team quit en masse. The algorithm was perfect. The leadership was absent.[…]
Category: 2025
The Empathy Algorithm: Why the Best CEOs Think Like Machines but Lead Like Humans
Agility Is Not Enough
by Baba Prasad
In every boardroom today, agility is the leadership buzzword. Move faster. Pivot sooner. Outpace the market.
But agility is often equated with speed, and speed alone is not enough. In Peter Drucker’s words, it risks becoming “doing efficiently what should not be done at all.”
Today’s leaders need five distinct agilities that align speed with insight, creativity, vision, and meaning: Analytical (seeing differently), Operational (reconfiguring rapidly), Inventive (creating under constraint), Communicative (shaping narratives), and Visionary (anticipating futures). Without them, agility becomes mere motion — impressive in pace, aimless in direction; “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” […]
Delivering Stakeholder Value Through Human Capability:
The Emerging World of Work
by Dave Ulrich
Everyone recognizes the rapidly evolving world of work with social, technology, economic, political, environmental, and demographic (STEPED) disruptions. While it might have been possible before to focus on customer or strategy or technology or culture or people or leadership or new HR operating models, today’s complex and rapidly changing business context requires alignment, integration, and simplicity in the face of complexity. Let me suggest three simple (not easy!) principles shaping the new world of work. […]
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AI: Transforming the Future of Organizational Leadership
By Annika Steiber
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fast becoming a core element of business performance. From generating content to automating workflows, generative and agentive AI are changing how organizations operate. Yet amid the media buzz and market hype, it’s important to separate substance from sensation. AI is not a force that will replace human leadership—it’s a tool that, when used well, will enhance decision-making, improve effectiveness and efficiency, and empower transformation.[…]
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The Founders Mode – The next challenge to traditional leadership concepts
By Thomas Sattelberger
The Global Peter Drucker Forum 2025 in Vienna is dedicated to the topic of “Next Era Leadership,” or the challenge to leadership in our times of multiple crises and upheavals. Peter Drucker warned us in his day: “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”[…]
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The Liberation of Leadership in the Digital Renaissance
by Marc Wagner
We are not living in a time of change. We are living in a change of times. What unfolds before us is a fundamental renegotiation of how organizations create value and how leadership functions within them.[…]
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From Survival Mode to Thriving: A Practical Roadmap for Leading Human-AI Organizations
By Petr Knap
Europe’s 13% employee engagement rate in 2024 is a radical wake-up call. As AI agents proliferate and reshape work, organizations face a choice: continue extracting value from disengaged humans or build environments where people and AI flourish together.[…]
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Human-AI Collaboration: Redefining Work for the Industry 5.0 Era
By Annika Steiber
Human-AI collaboration is no longer a futuristic vision—it’s happening now. As we move into the Industry 5.0 era, there’s a powerful opportunity: not to replace people with machines, but to combine human strengths with AI’s capabilities. This blend offers new levels of innovation, agility, and purpose at work.[…]
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