When the Old Rules Stop Working: Jennifer Vessels on Leadership and AI

Yeah.

So let's start with the premise of your book.

Many successful business leaders have spent decades developing their experience and judgment, and they've built successful companies using management practices that have worked well.

But your book suggests these same practices can now become obstacles.

What are business leaders getting wrong about the way they manage their organizations today?

So let's Take a step back and think about where we were 20, 30, 40 years ago was truly in the era of what I call the industrial age, where people graduated from college, they started in the company, they worked their way up the corporate ladder.

All of the KPIs, all of the measurements, all of the funding was based upon how much you were going to produce, sell, grow, and shift.

And people have been rewarded based upon building more, doing more, making more, and honestly, buying more.

And when we really take a step back and think about that model of it's all about more, in today's world, I have to question, is that really what we as society need? And is that working for us? And if we think back to 2020, only six years ago in COVID, when we all took a step back, we got off of those ladders and those hamster wheels.

We realized the impact that capitalism had had on the environment.

as well as moving forward, what that has meant for the haves and the have-nots.

The polarization of society today is creating a lot of that distrust and honestly dislike of people.

Of course, that is fueled today through geopolitics, the younger generations coming into the workforce, the Gen Zs, that have seen us, the millennials, Gen Xers, baby boomers, working and working to achieve very little.

So I believe we're at a very unique and interesting and exciting time in history when those that I call cyclones of change are beginning to collide.

The impact on the environment, the haves, have-nots, the politics, the societal change.

And for leaders that think the answer when things are not working, they think the answer is to simply implement AI to speed it up.

We'll get more productivity.

We'll do more.

We'll get even bigger.

That really doesn't make sense, does it?

Existing problems become magnified is really what happens when you start doing that.

And that's what we're hearing constantly throughout the series.

I mean, it's just a good way to find your problems and see them go much bigger.

Put AI in.

How does a leader recognize something which worked for 20 years, which is now a liability rather than the advantage?