For centuries, experience was the gold standard for leadership. The more years you had in an industry, the more valuable your judgment. But what happens when AI can predict business outcomes better than any executive with 30 years of experience?
AI is forcing us to rethink what leadership really means. Does it still come from experience? Or from the ability to use AI insights better than others?
Let’s take a real example:
A CEO who has run retail businesses for 20 years makes a gut decision about which product will sell. A startup young competitor uses an AI tool, trained on billions of data points, that recommends a completely different product strategy or maybe the same. Who wins?
Here’s the shocking truth: AI is a great tool to catchup on experience , thus experience is no more a competitive advantage. It is the ability to decide based on data and trends in front of you. The old belief that “experience leads to better decisions” is being challenged at scale as ability to decide is now under the microscope as never before.
What should you do? Stop assuming that seniority equals superior judgment. The best leaders will blend AI-powered insights with human intuition instead of clinging to outdated decision-making models. If you’re a leader, you should be actively experimenting with AI-driven forecasting, competitive analysis, and predictive modelling. If your company still relies on manual experience-based decisions, you’re already operating at a disadvantage.
The AI era doesn’t reward experience. It rewards adaptability.