How can organizations best navigate the volatility of AI advancement? By focusing on purpose.
The great challenge leaders will face as AI changes the world around us is to bring their organizations through the storms and upheavals in one piece. There is something of a paradox here, for the organization will have to change to survive in a changing world. What, if anything, remains constant on that journey? What is it that unifies a business or other organization from moment to moment, day to day, and year to year, through changing market conditions, physical movement, staff turnover, and even changes in name and ownership? What makes decisions that affect the future performance of a business meaningful now?
The answer, the red thread that connects snapshots through time, is purpose. Purpose provides a business with its foundation, its reason for existing. It is the source of its values and the foundation that makes work meaningful for employees. The faster the world moves, and the more rapidly we move through it, the more important it becomes to have something secure against which we can navigate—a fixed point of reference, a beacon, a polestar. Purpose serves that guiding role.
Reaffirm your purpose. Everything follows from and returns to this.
Navigating with Purpose
To be steered by purpose is to embrace continuity and change at the same time, and even to seek one in the guise of the other. To create an organization that can not only survive but thrive in a time of deep uncertainty, you must:
Use your imagination. Project your company’s purpose into the future and explore hypotheticals. Think about the changes AI might bring while pushing your imagination to take in even the most unlikely options. You cannot plan for all contingencies, but a little speculative daydreaming can help inoculate you to the shock of dramatic and unforeseen change. If you can avoid the paralysis that comes with surprise, you can move rapidly to take advantage of the new situation.
Keep constant watch on the horizon. Uncertainty about the future does not imply an epistemic free-for-all. Sometimes, events will emerge from the mist leaving you with little time to react. But you will often be able to identify inevitable changes well in advance so long as you remain alert for them. Be ready to move quickly to add new AI capabilities to your innovation portfolio and to adapt your organization to deliver on its purpose even as the tech landscape changes.
Cultivate emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the capacity to be keenly aware of your own emotions and the impact they can have on any sort of personal or professional relationship. And although responding to AI is often talked about as an intellectual and technological challenge, it is also an emotional one. We will be living in uncertainty, exposed to dramatic change and finding a way through fears of and dreams for the future. To lead well in such times requires emotional intelligence as an absolute minimum. Emotional intelligence will help you manage your own emotions and your reactions to them and will also help guide your team and organization through the inevitable upheavals.
Adopt a “beginner’s mind” approach. “In the beginner’s mind,” writes the Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki, “there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” In the context of AI, we can think of this attitude as remaining open to ignorance by accepting the unknown. For the leader, this means being comfortable with not having all the answers. It is only in this way that you will be able to respond appropriately when the unimaginable happens.
Slow things down even as the world is speeding up. When things are always changing, when the old answers don’t work and the new ones need to be found yesterday, when everything is urgent and important, our natural instinct is to respond with speed. But the Stoic philosopher Seneca points out something important about this reaction: “When you hurry through a maze; the faster you go, the worse you are entangled.” This is useful wisdom for living in an evolving AI-driven world. It is indeed a maze, and possibly the most complex one ever created. Instead of hurrying through it, it will pay to instead take our time, to stroll and consider—there is always more time available than you think.
Aim for antifragility rather than stability. Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s concept of “antifragility” encapsulates the power that can come from embracing uncertainty: ‘“Fragility” can be defined as an accelerating sensitivity to a harmful stressor: this response plots as a concave curve and mathematically culminates in more harm than benefit from random events. “Antifragility” is the opposite, producing a convex response that leads to more benefit than harm.’
An antifragile organization is one that is designed not just to survive but to flourish in uncertain times.
Adapted/published with permission from ‘TRANSCEND‘ by Faisal Hoque (Post Hill Press, Hardcover, April 8, 2025). Copyright 2025, Faisal Hoque, All rights reserved.
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Original article @ ChiefExecutive.
