AI Quests: Leadership in a time of intelligence transformation
There are moments when the future arrives gradually, and moments when it arrives all at once.
The strange thing about this moment is that many leaders we speak to are not sure which one they are in.
Artificial intelligence is moving at a pace that feels both incremental and exponential. There is a steady accumulation of small shifts: new tools, new capabilities, new workflows. And then there are moments that feel like a break in the pattern, when something becomes possible that simply was not possible before.
Many leaders we are working with are facing into a familiar dilemma in new circumstances. Move too slowly and you risk irrelevance. Move too fast and you risk breaking trust, culture, and the very human systems organisations rely on.
We see this moment as one that is moving from digital transformation to intelligence transformation. Because what is shifting is not only the technology itself, but the conditions in which insight, judgement and decisions are made across organisations and societies.
The questions beneath the technology
In our conversations with senior leaders, the most urgent questions span from the technical to the human.
How do we compete? Where do we invest? What becomes more efficient? What becomes obsolete?
And then, just beneath that layer, a different set of questions begins to surface: questions of meaning, responsibility and human experience.
When insight becomes cheap, what becomes valuable?
When AI makes it possible to act faster than we can think, what keeps judgement slow enough to be wise?
When some of the most senior people in the organisation are the slowest to adopt, what does that mean for culture, credibility and change?
When AI can generate persuasive narratives at scale, what happens to truth, trust, and shared reality?
In a conversation last week, a senior HR leader in a global firm put it like this:
“From the top of the organisation, the question is how we help people embrace AI rather than see it as a threat. Yes, AI increases productivity, but it should also give leaders space to reinvest time in being more human, exercising judgement, and focusing on what AI cannot do.
Our framing is that humans provide the context, AI provides the content. The risk otherwise is people simply working faster and harder, leading to burnout. We are trying to balance AI capability with human qualities.”
That distinction points to a deeper leadership dilemma. If AI increases speed, leaders can either allow that speed to become pressure, or they can protect the space for what only humans can do: sensemaking, ethical judgement, relationship, and the ability to hold ambiguity without rushing to false certainty.
Why an AI Quest
Our AI Quest is a deliberately curated space for senior teams to step out of the day-to-day and engage directly with these forces that are reshaping leadership and the world of work.
Over the course of a Quest, teams meet the people shaping this transition: technologists, investors, policymakers, entrepreneurs, researchers, and leaders inside major incumbent organisations navigating transformation at scale.
The Quest is designed to help teams look beyond the headlines and build shared clarity about what this intelligence shift means for strategy, culture and responsibility.
The programme is shaped in partnership with Vijay Gurbaxani. Vijay is Founding Director of the Center for Digital Transformation at UC Irvine and Taco Bell Endowed Professor Emeritus of Information Systems and Computer Science. He brings a rare ability to connect academic rigour with board level decision making.
As Vijay put it: “AI is not just a technology shift, but a leadership test. The question is not what the technology can do, but what kind of organisations and societies we choose to build with it.”
Where to Quest
AI Quests are rooted in place because the story of AI is not singular. It is being shaped differently across contexts, and through shifting incentives, values and power structures.
In Silicon Valley, leaders encounter the speed and ambition of frontier innovation, and the tension between rapid experimentation and responsibility.
In Vancouver, the emphasis shifts to applied AI and values -ed innovation, exploring how trust and performance can be held together in practice.
In London, the focus turns to governance, policy and finance, and what it means to lead across boundaries in complex, interconnected systems.
Each place makes different questions unavoidable.
What leaders take away
An AI Quest is not designed to leave teams with a toolkit or a playbook. It’s designed to strengthen collective foresight and ability to navigate uncertainty. Over the course of the experience, leadership teams:
Build shared understanding of the forces disrupting their operating environment
Surface the tensions and choices that matter most
Develop a clearer view of the cultural and organisational shifts required
Identify practical actions that can be embedded into strategy and ways of working
Reconnect with a sense of agency at a time when change can feel overwhelming
Leading what comes next
Technology will continue to evolve at pace. What matters is whether leadership evolves with it. In the end, the most important question is not how intelligent our systems become. It is how we choose to live and lead alongside them.
