AI can make work more efficient, but it cannot replace the human ability to assess, imagine and create something new. Therefore, one of the leader’s most important tasks will not simply be to implement technology, but to develop the organisation’s thinking power.
Summer is upon us, and for many leaders, this means the most important – and perhaps only – real opportunity to pause during the year. There is room to think deeply and look further ahead than next week’s deadlines.
But when you return to your desk in August, you step back into a working world where the rules of the game are fundamentally changing.
AI is increasingly taking over cognitive routine work. It can write, analyse, summarise, calculate and produce at a speed humans cannot match. So the crucial question for leaders is no longer simply how we can use AI more effectively. The question is: What is it that humans – and organisations – now need to become exceptionally good at?
My answer is: thinking power.
Thinking power is the ability to think clearly, critically and creatively – and to turn that thinking into intelligent action. It is the ability to pause, examine our own thoughts and assumptions, imagine alternatives and make better decisions before autopilot takes over.
And that is precisely why one of the most important leadership tasks of the future will be developing people’s ability to think.
When AI Takes Over the Routine, Thinking Becomes Your Core Skill
We are in the middle of a shift from a knowledge economy to a learning economy. In the knowledge economy, we competed on knowledge. That is still important. But in the learning economy, the decisive factor becomes our ability to learn quickly, ask better questions and develop new solutions. In the future, AI will make access to standard knowledge and routine knowledge work a commodity. Competitive advantage will increasingly lie in how we think with that knowledge.
The problem is that for decades, we have turned the competence pyramid upside down. We have prioritised professional skills above everything else and forgotten that the foundation for putting those skills into practice is our mental skills: the ability to reflect, assess and think in new ways.
This means the competence pyramid needs to be turned the right way up again.
If the foundation is weak, we will not get enough out of our professional skills. When the foundation is strong, people can use both their expertise and technology much more intelligently.
This is where thinking power becomes the organisation’s core skill. Not as a soft alternative to technology, but as the prerequisite for using technology wisely – and for being able to navigate future change and continuously reinvent ourselves.
There Needs to Be Balance in the Thinking Equation
When it comes to AI, it is all about balance – just as it is with so many other things. If we outsource too much of our thinking to AI, we risk losing our critical sense and our ability to think for ourselves. If we reject technology outright, we will be heading into the future with square wheels on our cart.
It is essential that we find the right balance. Deep thinking cannot simply be outsourced to artificial intelligence, because AI can only think within the boundaries of its existing data. It does not create something genuinely new, nor can it imagine things that do not yet exist. That is a uniquely human strength. And therefore, it is something we need to cultivate much more deliberately going forward.
We Look Where the Light Is Best
But if thinking power is so important, why don’t we prioritise it more?
Part of the answer can be found in the classic joke about the drunk man looking for his lost car keys underneath a streetlight. Not because that is where he lost them, but simply because that is where the light is best.
Exactly the same thing happens in many organisations. I call it the organisational streetlight effect.
We look where the light is best and focus on behaviour, KPIs and results – everything that is easy to observe, measure and quantify. And that makes sense: leaders need to create results and keep operations under control.
The problem is that, in doing so, we can easily overlook what lies beneath the surface: the complex network of thoughts, emotions, assumptions, mental models and habits that shape employees’ behaviour.
We try to change the results without changing the thinking that creates them.
Busyness Is a Poor Strategy
The second part of the explanation is busyness. Busyness has become an epidemic in many organisations. Calendars are packed, meetings follow one another like beads on a string, and notifications keep buzzing just when you finally think you have found a quiet moment to think.
In such a reality, deep reflection has little room to breathe. And without time for deep thinking, it is difficult to think deeply, create good solutions and make wise decisions.
We unconsciously end up doing what we have always done. We ask people to run a little faster instead of taking the time to help them think better. We try to optimise our way out of problems that actually require better thinking.
We are so busy that we do not have time to think things through properly. But that is a questionable strategy – particularly in the long term.
The reason for short-term thinking and busyness is rarely unwillingness. Quite the opposite. Most leaders genuinely want to create space for reflection, learning and development. The problem is an organisational system error.
Challenging the Fat Cat Syndrome
But what characterises the organisations that actually manage to create space for deep thinking without compromising the bottom line?
They prioritise it relentlessly. Not just as nice words in a strategy, but in everyday practice. They have shared thinking models and make time to think, imagine and develop the future.
These organisations have understood something fundamental: Every organisation becomes irrelevant if it does not continuously reinvent itself. They recognise that pure operational optimisation is the slow death.
These organisations avoid what is known as the Fat Cat syndrome: the idea that success makes you complacent. They know that if they spend all their time optimising existing operations, they will forget to invent the future. And then they will be outcompeted – it is only a matter of time.
That is why thinking power is not an individual matter. It is something leaders must actively develop and protect within the organisation.
From “Operator” to “Thinking Coach”
The intersection of people, new technology and global volatility will become a major leadership challenge towards 2030. The best way to future-proof organisations is to invest in the human X-factor: our thinking power.
But this requires a shift from being an “operator” who fixes employees’ problems to becoming a Thinking Coach who develops employees’ thinking and their ability to find solutions for themselves.
This does not mean that leaders should never provide answers. But if the leader always provides the solution, they train employees to become dependent rather than to think independently.
Here is how to become a Thinking Coach:
1. Train your own mental operating system
You cannot develop other people’s thinking if you are not working on your own. Notice your default reactions: When do you move too quickly into solution mode? When are you looking for confirmation rather than new perspectives? When do you confuse busyness with progress?
2. Avoid the “fixer trap”
When an employee comes to you with a problem, it is tempting to immediately provide an answer. It feels efficient and may even give you a little adrenaline boost. But it undermines other people’s thinking and creates an unhealthy dependency.
3. Ask more questions
Questions are the fuel that develops other people’s thinking. As a leader, you need to master the art of asking curious questions that challenge employees’ thinking, assumptions and understanding of the problems they are facing.
Future Organisations Need to Think Better
Artificial intelligence will change the way organisations operate and survive. AI will automate routine tasks, take over much of the analytical work and accelerate decision-making processes – in ways we have only just begun to understand.
But with the introduction of artificially intelligent colleagues, the most important leadership task will be to develop the most human abilities we have: the ability to think, imagine, assess and create something new together.
That is why thinking power is the core skill of the future.
When AI takes over the routine, the role of humans changes. And this requires leaders who dare to challenge the Fat Cat syndrome, step out from under the streetlight and create organisations that do not simply reproduce themselves faster, but actually think better.
The article is based on the book Tankekraft: Den glemte kunst at gå fra tanke til handling (Thinking Power: The Forgotten Art of Turning Thought into Action), written by Rasmus Thy Grøn.
