LEADERSHIP TECHNIQUES
Let’s talk about chess. Do you remember the hype and obsession when it was shaken up by the introduction of computers that were recognised as being better players than humans? That moment was literally a game-changer. There is some similarity between that and the AI, or NOI (non-organic intelligence), scenario that is playing out today given that we need to learn, or better still unlearn, the rules of the leadership game. A number of revolutions are influencing the world we know in dramatic fashion and are enforcing disruptive transformation in business and our everyday lives. A survey that we recently conducted at Iedc-Bled revealed that managers and leaders are interested like never before in AI leadership and the management of crisis and change, something that mirrors the overall impending mood of uncertainty. Look at how the notion of NOI leadership has generated a lot of buzz – and yet it remains an elusive concept. Even the mere thought of the changes following NOI integration creates anxiety, rather than excitement. Nevertheless, it is a leader’s responsibility to map out such scenarios of transformation. Metaphorically speaking, if our world is a chess board and we are playing with a ‘dark horse’ such as NOI, perhaps we should consider it our “primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces” to paraphrase the words of Thomas Henry Huxley, a British biologist known as the main advocate for Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. A double-edged gambit We are indeed experiencing some major changes in society at the moment and to tackle them e ciently we are in desperate need of this so-called ‘artificial’ intelligence. We define NOI as a set of algorithms able to solve various problems simultaneously – and many times faster than the human brain. Its non-organic nature means that it should only be viewed as a complementary aid to human mental ability, rather than being perceived as a superpower that can think and create stand-alone actions. As leaders or business educators, we need to make a double-edged gambit now to establish our own rules of approaching NOI. In fact, we must choose a side: are we becoming supporters of industry 4.0 or ideas 5.0? In essence, with NOI bursting into mass usage, we have to choose the path to stand on, whether this is one completely driven
Ambition NOVEMBER 2023 | 27
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