The Invisible Current
Rewatching Out of Africa, I smirked when Meryl Streep first played some music on her portable gramophone. Was that an anachronism? The music reproduction could never have been as good by 1937. Some quick research on the ever-ready iPhone served to scold me for forgetting elementary lessons I learned in high school. Likewise, watching movies depicting the late 19th Century has made me wonder for a moment if a light bulb would really have been around at that time.
We take so much in our daily lives for granted. Electricity, streaming music and TV, and, yes, even the Internet, are fundamental threads in the fabric of our daily lives. Yet some of us can remember when it was all new and revolutionary. Thousands of examples of scientific and technological revolutions have changed the way we live in ways so profound that predictions before they happened nearly always seem like science fiction.
So, too, Artificial Intelligence (AI). I was not long ago that even scientists predicted that we would need to wait until the mid-21st Century before usable AI would be developed. We know now, of course, that AI is not only ubiquitous but probably indispensable for any future career. Its full integration into the social fabric will, however, take time and occur at different rates. In one of the AI courses I took, a teacher noted that when asked if radiologists would survive in the face of AI he responded “yes, radiology and radiologists who use AI will prosper, but radiologists who do not use AI will quickly become extinct.”
Eventually, the power grid became so reliable and ubiquitous that it faded into the background, simply enabling everything else. AI is our generation’s “electricity”. It is not a tool to be "implemented"; it is a utility that will soon undergird every interaction, strategy, and deliverable in the corporate world.
For a brief period, as the Internet rolled into business and its impact was evolving and uncertain, organizations had to appoint “chief Internet officers”. I was one. Yet even in the face of extreme skepticism on the part of some traditionalists, no business or organization can survive for even a moment without it. The same is now true for social-media-empowered commerce, and very soon agentic-empowered commerce.
When it comes to AI, we are living through the “Great Shakeout”. While the long-term arc of AI is certain, the short-term winners are anything but. Today’s market-leading large language models (LLMs) may be tomorrow’s Netscape. It is noteworthy that Amazon operated for years without posting a profit, and as for Webvan, its fate serves as a reminder of the volatility in this sector. For the executive, this creates a paralyzing paradox: How do you lead a company toward a destination when the map is still being drawn in real-time?
This is where the role of the Executive Coach becomes indispensable.
The coach himself or herself must first learn to use AI skillfully as a partner. This is not as straightforward as might appear. As for the client, the challenge for today’s leader isn't just mastering AI tools, partners and prompts; it's managing the human "vibration" that new technology creates. Within a single department, a leader faces a chaotic spectrum of adoption. They must temper the reckless speed of the enthusiasts, provide evidence to the skeptics, and—most importantly—lead with profound empathy for those who fear that AI is coming for their livelihood.
For a coaching client, leading in the age of AI requires a delicate touch. It’s about learning the most effective ways to use AI to enhance job and team performance, reassuring a skeptical or fearful workforce that their human intuition is more valuable than ever, even as the tools they use change by the hour. As coaches, our job is to help leaders stay grounded in that human element while the current of AI carries us all forward. To talk through with clients the nuances of these roles and the reactions or likely reactions of partners and teams, and to help team members to celebrate the new power that AI offers them.
It is a story of bold celebration and sensitive, evolving adaptation. It is hard yet rewarding work to reach the point where AI is second nature. Ponder this the next time a storm takes out the power!
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