Why Most Leaders Are Getting AI Wrong - And What to Do About It

 Most leaders think AI is a technology problem. It isn't. It's a clarity problem.

And the organisations struggling most with AI right now aren't the ones without the tools. They're the ones that didn't have strategic clarity before AI arrived - and now the absence of it is impossible to ignore.

Ask the people two levels below your executive team what your department's purpose is. What success looks like. What makes your organisation genuinely different. The answers will surprise you, and not in a good way.

We've seen this repeatedly at Exigence. Leadership teams who are genuinely aligned at the top, certain the strategy is understood throughout. Then we ask the same questions at the levels below. The disparity is striking. It's not a failure of intelligence or commitment. It's a failure of communication and clarity - and AI is exposing it faster than any previous change has.

This is the insight I took most from a recent conversation with Campbell Macpherson - change catalyst, author of Leading with Influence, and one of the clearest thinkers I've spoken to on what the AI era actually demands of leaders.

Three scenarios worth knowing

Campbell offers a useful way to cut through the AI noise. The future likely takes one of three paths: a false dawn where AI disappoints and the revolution stalls; augmented intelligence where AI becomes an invaluable assistant helping people do more, better and faster - where the smart money sits right now; or human displacement, where whole categories of work disappear. We're already seeing early signals of the third - the Big Four have cut entry-level hiring, magic circle law firms are reducing paralegal roles.

Here's what matters about this framework: plant your flag in scenario two and you're neither naively optimistic nor paralysed by fear. You're asking how to use this to do things better and more creatively. That question opens doors. 

Leaders who assume scenario three, or quietly hope for scenario one, tend to do nothing. And doing nothing is the most dangerous move of all.

Nine traits that define AI-ready leadership

Campbell has identified nine leadership behaviours for navigating this era. They're worth sitting with, because what strikes me about them is how timeless they are: Embrace the change and lead it. Understand the second and third-order consequences of your decisions. Strengthen your strategic core - know what your team is for, what makes you distinctive, what you want to be known for. Soothe the fears - people are worried, some with good reason, and your job is to acknowledge that. Unleash curiosity - the leaders thriving with AI aren't the most technically gifted, they're the most curious. Champion "what if" thinking and create space for innovation. Encourage healthy scepticism - AI doesn't have your experience, context or judgment, so own the output. Hone your emotional intelligence - empathy, nuance and connection are your edge. And adopt stewardship - leave your team and organisation better than you found it.

The context has changed dramatically. The fundamentals haven't.

The strategic clarity problem - and a practical fix

Of the nine, Campbell identifies strategic clarity as the most undervalued and the most commonly papered over. Leaders assume their people understand the strategy. They usually don't.

The fix isn't a strategy away-day. Campbell describes facilitating a session with 100 senior leaders where they did something deceptively simple: they named the fears and risks about delivering their strategy, prioritised them in the room, and handed them back to the people present to solve. Suddenly everyone was invested. Everyone was accountable. The strategy had a far greater chance of landing - not because it changed, but because the people responsible for it finally owned it.

What to do this week - even if your organisation isn't ready

You don't need to wait for your organisation to catch up. If your IT policy won't let you experiment with AI at work, do it at home - but be sensible about it. Never upload confidential, client or commercially sensitive information to any external AI tool, and in some organisations accessing certain files on a personal device is itself a serious policy breach. 

Start instead with something genuinely yours - a personal development plan, a structure for a talk you're preparing, a leadership challenge you're thinking through. Ask for help, refine it, make it yours.

At Exigence we've built AI into our own operations - including a tool that functions as our chief marketing officer. It took time to build properly, but the return has been significant. And, critically, it forced us to be precise about what we actually needed - which is exactly the kind of strategic thinking Campbell champions.

Treat AI like a talented but inexperienced colleague who needs your context, guidance and judgment to perform well. Not a magic answer machine. Not a threat. A tool that gets better the more thoughtfully you use it.

The leaders who'll struggle aren't those who try AI and get it wrong. They're the ones who wait to be replaced by someone who didn't.

→ The full conversation with Campbell is on the Impactful Conversations podcast, which you can listen to here or wherever you get your podcasts. 

If strategic clarity or AI readiness is something your leadership team is navigating right now, we'd be glad to talk.