Leadership report sparks AI debate

Futurist Tom Cheesewright reacts to new data coming from the EGN leadership Report.

A brand-new leadership report has been made available including a survey from no less than 3328 business leaders and specialists. They were asked to answer questions concerning five key challenges facing leaders and organizations in 2024.

We had renowned futurist, Tom Cheesewright look at the numbers and comment on their meaning. Not surprisingly the most interesting part was concerning the use of AI.

Get ready to embrace AI

EGN’s extensive leadership report shows that 47 percent of all workplaces either already have or are in the process of implementing guidelines for the use of AI. This does not surprise Tom Cheesewright.

“What we see today is that some parts of a company are more likely to implement AI in their workflows than others. Typically, it will be in places like marketing, where AI can be used to help in the creative flow of advertising and content creation. This statistic saying AI is being implemented in 47% of businesses does not mean that it is being used everywhere or even on a large scale in the organizations.”

More telling is the stat, that shows how only two percent of respondents don´t believe AI will improve their business in some way. A low percentage, but ultimately still too high, according to Tom Cheesewright.

“I do believe AI to be a new technology as impactful as the mobile phone. It will over time be built more and more into our lives, oftentimes without us even recognizing. 2024 is the year where generative AI will have its breakthrough and find its way into everyone’s personal and professional life – whatever their industry. It will be inescapable.” he says.

Why looking at the future is important

The leadership report presents five key challenges facing leaders in the future, each of which Tom notes have been raised with him by clients. When he is not analyzing reports, he works with large companies trying to prepare them for the future.

“People contact me with two different challenges. One is they see something coming and they’re excited. They want to profit from it, or use it for good to save the planet.But even more come to me with the second, saying “we didn’t see this coming, and it nearly took us out.””

In his job he uses different tools such as scenario planning and role-playing games. It might sound playful, but it is some of the most precise ways to predict an unpredictable future.

“We are trying to explore what the future might bring, by trying to find the intersections between known challenges and incoming trends and technologies.”

Fore sighting is something everyone does, but the scale of it varies greatly. The importance of it cannot be underestimated. The nature of technology means that a lot of change does change very quickly. Being on top of things is critical and realizing something too late can be devastating for any business. EGN´s leadership report tries to give an insight into, what we must focus our attention on in the future.