AI for Leaders in 2026: Promoted or Replaced?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: No Bullsh!t Leadership

Episode: AI for Leaders in 2026: Promoted or Replaced?
Host: Martin G Moore
Guests: James Killick (AI Expert), Emma (Moderator)
Date: June 16, 2026

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Brief Overview

This episode dives deep into what artificial intelligence means for leaders in 2026. Host Martin G Moore is joined by resident AI expert James Killick and moderator Emma to explore how AI impacts leadership roles, organizational change, and the essential skills leaders must develop to survive and thrive. The episode is less about AI’s technical specifics and more about actionable, no-nonsense leadership advice for those who may feel threatened or left behind by rapid technological disruption.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The AI Revolution: Threat or Opportunity?

Timestamps: 00:43 – 03:34

• Widespread Anxiety About AI:
  Many leaders feel lost in meetings about AI, nodding along without understanding much, while unrealistic mandates to “get AI in” and “do more with less” rain down from above.

  “You're the one who's supposed to be leading this. If that's you, good, at least you're being honest. And you're in better company than you might think.” (Martin Moore, 00:52)

• AI Will Not Replace Real Leaders:
  Leaders are still needed to “take the people, the money, the systems and the tools you've been given and…create the most value you possibly can for your company.” (Martin Moore, 02:13)

• Who is at Risk:
  AI will disrupt leaders who rely too much on technical skills or get bogged down in details, instead of leveraging their teams and tools for maximum impact.

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2. Leadership Fundamentals Remain the Same

Timestamps: 05:15 – 06:51

• Historical Parallel:
  The challenge of integrating AI is compared to past technological revolutions (e.g., the Industrial Revolution, enterprise software), where leaders had to optimize new resources for outcomes.
• The Unique Challenge:
  AI is cheap, accessible, and the speed of disruption is unprecedented.

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3. Where AI Implementations Go Wrong

Timestamps: 06:51 – 08:41

• Common Pitfalls:
  Organizations are rushing to automate without understanding their workflows deeply, chasing trends on social media rather than true business needs.

  “The drive to automate first without understanding the business process deeply enough is the reason 9 out of 10 AI projects fail.” (Martin Moore, 03:34)

• Notable Quote:

  “They're handing over these systems that technically work, they don't actually work for the business. And that's why you're seeing crazy percentages like 80 to 90% of AI initiatives failing.” (James Killick, 08:10)

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4. Practical Steps for Leaders to Adopt AI

Timestamps: 08:42 – 10:26

• Workflow Mapping:
  Leaders should methodically document their daily workflows over several weeks to identify where AI can help.

  “Do that for two to four weeks. That's going to give you this amazing piece of data.” (James Killick, 09:17)

• Prototype and Experiment:
  With AI, it's easier and cheaper to test hypotheses—prototyping can be done for a fraction of the cost it used to take.

• Push Back & Manage Up:
  Leaders need to have the courage to challenge unrealistic expectations from above and negotiate clearly for achievable goals.

  “If you don't at some point as a leader, push back and hold your ground… you're sort of screwed.” (Martin Moore, 10:26)

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5. AI as an “Over Enthusiastic Intern”

Timestamps: 13:15 – 13:58

• Key Analogy:

  "As a leader you need to understand what you're dealing with. Right. So this Intern has access to so much information...But being an intern, it's got very limited experience. It doesn't know always that the information it's giving you is the best." (James Killick, 13:23)

• Leadership Skill:
  Leaders must apply judgment and never simply accept AI’s outputs: “trust, but verify.”

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6. Shifting Professional Identity & The Talent Pipeline

Timestamps: 14:29 – 16:45; 30:35 – 33:14

• Professionals at Risk:
  AI will erode many traditional “professions” (law, accounting, etc.), impacting especially those clinging to individual contributor work.

• Talent Development Challenge:
  As AI absorbs entry-level tasks, the “talent pipeline” breaks—future experts have fewer places to gain foundational experience.

  “Now it's fair enough you can replace that work, but what happens when you get to associate partner?...you're just not building those skills in a deep way anymore." (Martin Moore, 30:56)

• Brave New Roles:
  Manual trades (e.g. plumbing) are less affected; value flows towards roles requiring integration, judgment, and human discernment.

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7. New Role Structures and the Importance of Specialization

Timestamps: 19:06 – 21:46

• Roles Are Broadening, Sometimes to Detriment:
  Attempting to consolidate multiple specialized roles into one “builder” is a recipe for failure. The most effective leaders have a broad team of specialists, not just generalists.

  “If you’re crunching those roles together, you’re losing that whole governance piece...I think it’s a train wreck to do that.” (Martin Moore, 19:34)

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8. What Makes AI Projects Succeed

Timestamps: 22:15 – 28:29

• Focus on Value, Not Just Technology:
  Leaders who act, experiment, and aim for quick proof will thrive. Those waiting for perfect clarity or approval from above are at risk.

• Action is Key:

  “The opportunity is right now. There's not going to be a better opportunity in our lives ever again. The people that bury their heads in the sand...might even lose their jobs. The people that take action, they will move up the rankings.” (James Killick, 25:08)

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9. Day-to-Day AI Adoption: Methods & Mindset

Timestamps: 28:29 – 30:33; 38:57 – 41:00

• Workflow Focus:
  Start by automating mundane or disliked tasks. Identify high-impact, repetitive actions for automation and keep “eyeball situations” human.

• Communication is the Crucial Skill:
  You don’t need to be techy; if you can communicate clearly, you can lead AI tools.

• Prompting & Context:

  “If you are a good prompter, if you can prompt precisely in your communication...you get much better answers than if you're just...rather clumsy with it.” (Martin Moore, 39:05)

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10. Leading People vs. Leading AI

Timestamps: 41:41 – 43:52

• Key Distinction:

  “Leading AI is inward, leading humans is outward.” (Emma, 41:41)
  When leading AI, the skill is internal—defining what’s needed and parsing outputs. With humans, leadership is external—engagement, empathy, stretching capabilities.

• AI Teams:
  “When you're dealing with humans, you've got to have empathy...When it comes to AI, it's so much more about you. You have to have that empathy internally.” (James Killick, 43:14)

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11. Mindset Shifts & The Leader’s New Playbook

Timestamps: 43:55 – 48:44

• Killick’s Advice:
  Leverage AI to parallelize your work—a leader’s value lies in planning/oversight and leaving the grunt work to AI:

  “If you used to do a hundred percent of a task, now you only do 20%...The 80%, the grunt work gets done by AI.” (James Killick, 44:11)

• Moore’s Advice:
  Double down on the fundamentals: clarify value, set clear accountabilities, develop the courage to have hard conversations, and learn to make good decisions quickly.

  “The very best thing that leaders can do...is get the fundamentals right...If you're a really good leader, then the AI age will massively increase your effectiveness.” (Martin Moore, 45:56)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Moving Fast:

  “Those leaders who can work within the ambiguity and still get some direction...there's real competitive advantage here, not just for the company, but for you individually as a leader.” (Martin Moore, 25:37)

• On Communication & Prompting:

  “If you can communicate well, you can work well with AI, and that's where I would start.” (James Killick, 38:57)

• On Professional Decline:

  “Traditional thinking says you leave school, you go to university, you get qualified in one of the professions…these professions are going to disappear to a large extent.” (Martin Moore, 14:29)

• AI as Intern:

  “AI is an over enthusiastic intern…It will try and give you as many answers as it possibly can. But being an intern, it's got very limited experience.” (James Killick, 13:23)

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Actionable Takeaways for Leaders

1. Stop Waiting—Take Action:
   Leaders who act now to understand and integrate AI will be promoted; those who wait risk obsolescence.

2. Double Down on Leadership Fundamentals:
   Empathy, decision-making speed, conflict management, and the ability to drive value remain critical.

3. Trust but Verify:
   AI’s outputs are only as good as a leader’s ability to ask the right questions and apply judgment.

4. Map, Then Automate:
   Document daily workflows, identify repetitive and mundane tasks, and automate them first.

5. Leverage Your Team—Human or AI:
   Great leaders marshal resources—human, technological, or both—for maximum output and value.

6. Keep Learning & Experimenting:
   Get hands-on with AI: experiment, make mistakes, and learn by doing rather than analysis or caution.

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Final Mindset Shifts

• Use AI as a multiplier, not a replacement for judgment or leadership.
• Focus on what only humans can do—building relationships, integrating perspectives, and leading with empathy.
• Leaders are, and will always be, needed to create value out of new tools.

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For leaders in 2026: AI is the tool. Outstanding leadership is the differentiator.

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For further insights and community support, listen to the full episode or visit leadershipbeyondthetheory.com.

Transcript

[James Killick]

What everyone needs to realize is that the opportunity is right now. There's not going to be a better opportunity in our lives ever again. The people that bury their heads in the sand, they might get on. They might even lose their jobs. The people that take action, they will move up the rankings.

[Emma]

Welcome to the no Bullshit Leadership Podcast. In a world where knowledge has become a commodity, this podcast is designed to give you something more access to the experience of a success, successful CEO who has already walked the path. So join your host, Martin Moore, who will unlock and bring to life your own leadership experiences and accelerate your journey to leadership excellence.

[Sam]

Have you ever sat in a meeting

[Martin Moore]

where people are talking about AI and

[Sam]

you're nodding along like you're all over it, but inside you're thinking, I've got

[Martin Moore]

no idea what they're talking about and

[Sam]

I'm the one who's supposed to be leading this. If that's you, good, at least you're being honest. And you're in better company than you might think. Because right now, all over the world, there's a multitude of decent leaders sitting in those same meetings, feeling exactly the same way you do. They just won't admit it. Now, your predicament's tough. The orders are probably already coming down from above. Get AI in, do more with less. Cut costs. Make it work somehow. But no one's telling you how. It's unlikely that your boss even knows anything beyond the broadest brushstrokes of detail about AI. On top of this, you turn around and half your team is refusing to use AI because they reckon it's coming for their jobs. Now, you may be wondering about your job. You've spent 20 years getting good at what you do. Now you're told some tool you don't understand is the future. Not you. You, with all your judgment, knowledge, and leadership capability. But I am going to challenge that, because here's what I actually think. And it's not what the hype merchants are selling. You don't need to all of a sudden become tech savvy. You just need to do the thing that leaders have always been hired to do. Take the people, the money, the systems

[Martin Moore]

and the tools you've been given and.

[Sam]

And use them to create the most value you possibly can for your company. That's been the leader's job since the Industrial Revolution, when man and machine worked in unison to achieve better outcomes. Well, guess what? This is still the leader's job. Today, the machine's just got faster, cheaper, and more capable. AI isn't coming for leaders. It's just coming for those leaders who live in the low level details of their people's work. The ones who think that technical skill is more valuable than leadership acumen. The ones who haven't worked out how to combine the information, the tools and the systems with their human talent to generate superior results. If you manage to get that right, AI is not going to replace you. It's going to make your leadership 10 times more effective.

[Martin Moore]

But if you get it wrong, there's

[Sam]

nowhere to run and there's nowhere to hide. So I wanted to pull this apart properly on a podcast episode. Now, this is not a podcast about AI per se, it's about leadership, making sure your leadership skills are solid enough to withstand and adapt to the new AI world. Emma sat me down with James Killick, and we spent an hour wrestling with the biggest challenges we're hearing from our podcast community. I didn't want another bloke on a

[Martin Moore]

podcast telling you how the robots are going to take over the world.

[Sam]

There's plenty of that going around. But James does this for a living. He built a company and then he sold it, and then he spent five years nearly running his next one into the ground. Which, let's be honest, that's where you get the real lessons from. Now he's building AI systems for businesses like ours. He's got the scars to prove it. And he talks in plain English, not tech jargon, which is exactly what I wanted. So we got into the really good stuff. Why the smartest thing you can do is to treat AI like an over enthusiastic intern. Why the drive to automate first without understanding the business process deeply enough is the reason 9 out of 10 AI projects fail. And a concept I keep repeating, leading AI has an inward focus. Leading people has an outward focus. So if you've ever sat in a meeting and felt that step behind, this one's for you. Grab a coffee and settle in. By the end of this, you're going to know exactly what you need to do tomorrow morning. So let's get into it.

[Emma]

So we're on a leadership podcast and we've been talking a lot between us and at your senior mentor about AI. And every single day we're having conversations about what AI means for us and what it means for all of the leaders around the world who listen to our podcast and do our programs. And so I wanted you two to get together in the flesh. So, Marty, leadership expert, our resident AI expert, James Killick, and I wanted us to pull this apart and talk about, well, what does this actually Mean, for the leaders in our community,

[Martin Moore]

this is one of those things where I think it's not hugely different from the way it's always been for the last few hundred years. And in the last couple of hundred years, you go back to the Industrial revolution when it stopped being just a manual labor force that was producing things. All of a sudden the challenge became, how do I integrate the people that have always been doing the work with these new machines that I've just invested a bunch of capital in? How do I actually get them to work together to produce a result? So leadership has always been about taking the resources you've got and creating the highest value outcome you possibly can. And whether it's people, machines, technology, other resources, other assets, you've got to optimize those to get a result. Now, the difference here is that in the AI world, there's a whole lot of fear and loathing around what's actually going to happen and how quickly it's moving. And so the speed of disruption and the cheap nature of disruption. We don't have to spend a million dollars of capital to get machines into our factory to make it work. AI is cheap and available and easy to implement, which is one of the deceptive things about it. So, you know, I always answer a question eventually, how do we actually get people to adopt it? Well, it's like any other change management process in any other leadership facet is to say, here's a new way of working, we've got to get on board with this. How do I actually bring you along? Understanding where you add value, where the tool adds value, and why it's good for you to move. And that's always been the challenge for leadership. Whether it's introducing new ERP system or a business intelligence system or anything else, the same challenge lives here.

[Emma]

James, what are you seeing in terms of implementation in businesses?

[James Killick]

I think what Marty just said is exactly true, but I think the problem is people are not seeing it that way. So everyone is throwing out all of those procedures, the ones that have worked for years and years and years, and instead they're just kind of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. They're not looking at the problem, they're not looking for the best solution. They're just following those shiny objects that are preached about on social media, which

[Martin Moore]

is extremely dangerous from a business perspective, because without that level of discipline and understanding. Let me just take a little sidebar here, because I've just read John McNeil's book, the Algorithm, which is a fantastic read. John McNeil was the former CEO and president of Tesla and he's got the rules for how to build an extraordinary enterprise that grows 10x100x where it was, and just has this massive escalating growth. And one of his key rules in the algorithm is automate last. Don't automate until you really understand the ins and outs of that business process so profoundly that automation is just the natural next step. Yeah, I think what we're doing here is Automate first and it's disastrous.

[James Killick]

Yes, 100%. So we're seeing a lot of agencies come out into the market and what they're doing is they are approaching businesses, approaching senior leaders and saying, I've got the solution for you. And then they are not understanding what the workflows are, not understanding whether it's good data that they're using. So they're handing over the these systems that technically work, they don't actually work for the business. And that's why you're seeing crazy percentages like 80 to 90% of AI initiatives failing.

[Martin Moore]

Yeah.

[Emma]

So I want to dig into the workflow because this is something, and you and I have discussed this a lot. The, the workflow concept is one of the things that you can do as a leader to start implementing AI without needing huge amounts of tools and without disrupting the way you do things as they currently are. Can we give people a quick win on how to actually start implementing or even writing down what their workflows are so they can work out how AI can, can help them, can make them more productive?

[James Killick]

Yeah, I think so. I mean, we've discussed it many times. The best thing to do is to actually map out your day to day, not just your billable work, but like what are the series of steps you take every single day. Do that for two to four weeks. That's going to give you this amazing piece of data. And we were doing things like this when we were developing apps because we were looking for the problem to solve. The issue back then was that you had to go through all of that reams of data. Now you have AI to go through that data. And, and so once you've got your data layer and you put AI on the top of it and then you start talking to AI, then you start talking within the organization, where are the real opportunities?

[Emma]

Because I think that's what a lot of people are missing right now is what does it mean for me in my role, in my context. And they're not getting the advice from above that's helping them to actually pick through that so you'll have a lot of leaders who, they don't have a say in the AI strategy. They, they don't have a say, they just get given a tool. So what's the best, what's the best way to lead through that, Marty?

[Martin Moore]

Oh, that's a really good question because I think the mandates come down from above. They have unrealistic expectations about what's achievable and you've got these good soldiers down below who are just trying to implement. So as a leader, if you're not a leader who's strong enough to push back on your boss and say, well, hang on a minute, my job is to capture the most value I possibly can raise. The resources you've given me, my team, the assets, the money that you've bestowed upon me, I've got to be a good steward of those for the company. What you're asking me to do is not helping me to be a good steward. Right. I need direction about A, B, C and D. Here are the things that I can see for where I am, where the best deployment might be for the AI tools. Here are the things that I see as being most important to us, and here's where I think we can get some traction. So you've got the unrealistic expectations coming down from above. If you don't at some point as a leader, push back and hold your ground and know how to have those conversations and know how to manage up and to engage in the necessary conflict, that constructive conflict with your boss, you're sort of screwed. And this is why I say these leadership disciplines, principles and skills that you need are the same as they were 20 years ago. It's just that now you're in a fast paced environment where the hype is massive, the expectations are high and you're sandwiched because you don't understand the technology either.

[James Killick]

So as a senior leader, it's never been easier to prototype something, to put together an hypothesis and then use AI to actually prove that it's correct. We've never seen that before. With technology before, it would be 50, $100,000 to implement something. Now you can do it for one or $2,000 or even less if you're willing to get stuck into the technology. Your if you're talking to the people above you, you can actually go with real proof that what you're suggesting is going to work. This has completely changed the game.

[Martin Moore]

You spot on, James. One thing I will add though, when you say it's never been easy to prove an hypothesis, it's disproving it too, that you need to think about. And because AI is the ultimate people pleaser, just wants to please you, you got to be really judicious about the answers it gives you. Yes. But the having the judgment and the skill and the expertise to know whether the answers you're getting actually prove the hypothesis or just tell you what you want to hear.

[James Killick]

Yeah.

[Martin Moore]

And that's really key.

[James Killick]

Yeah. I have a technical sidebar, please. So AI loves to disprove other models. So there's a concept where you use the different AI models against each other to work out whether it's giving you good information. So if you get it off Claude, you put it through chat gbt and you actually say, oh, I got this off Claude. Because it likes to disprove. They like to disprove each other.

[Martin Moore]

That's not a technical sidebar.

[Sam]

That's.

[Martin Moore]

That's trust but verify. That's a leadership principle. I love it. It's brilliant.

[Emma]

James, something that I love that you say about AI is that it's an over enthusiastic intern. Can you talk to me a little bit more about that?

[James Killick]

Yeah. I think as a leader you need to understand what you're dealing with. Right. So this Internet has access to so much information. That's what makes it so enthusiastic. It will come and it will try and give you as many answers as it possibly can. But being an intern, it's got very limited experience. It doesn't know always that the information it's giving you is the best of the best. It doesn't know what good looks like. So when you manage it, you have to have this mindset. You have to really think, okay, is that information good or is it bad? You using your expertise, your years in

[Emma]

the field, and so that's a beautiful segue into identity, a leader's identity. There are a lot of people who I talk to who go, you know what, I'm a lawyer. I've always been a lawyer. Law is within me. I don't need to use AI. And they see AI as a threat to their identity and who they are and what they've spent their whole lives doing. How can people like this really use AI to its, to its benefit without feeling as though. So it's a threat.

[Martin Moore]

Oh, it's a threat. If you're a lawyer who prides themselves on lawyering and you've been doing that for 20 years, AI will replace a lot of that work, there's no doubt about it. So there's absolutely no reason why AI can't do the crunching of case reading and things like that, and assimilating all the information from common law and statutory law and bringing it all together, that will happen right now, it's not going to happen tomorrow. But if I was an individual contributor in fields like accounting and law and even some branches of medicine, I'd be nervous for my job. And this is, this has sort of really turned the tables because traditional thinking says you leave school, you go to university, you get qualified in one of the professions. It's not a job, this is a profession. Law, medicine, finance, these are professions and these professions are going to disappear to a large extent. They'll still need experts in those professions to guide the AI, to understand the outputs, to prompt it properly and to be able to put it all together. But for the majority of those people, and we're seeing clients already that are disrupting their own businesses and their own workforces by using AI where applicable. So I'll give you one example which is really useful. One of our clients has an accounting firm where a lot of that low end compliance work, the entry level work, can be done by AI and is being done by AI now. It hasn't actually replaced any of the core staff because they've been freed up to go and do high order advisory work, which is much more valuable, can be built at a much higher rate. So happy days. Right? But what it's done is it's chewed out the bottom end of what they were doing in their business, which they had outsourced, they'd offshored that to the Philippines. So it's the offshoring piece that's going to go first because that's the easiest work to replace. And we're seeing that happen already with our clients and working particularly well. And because they're fast movers, then what they're finding is they're getting a margin on their competitors. So their costs are going down, the cost to deliver the same thing is going down, the quality remains high and their margin is increasing because they can still charge the same amount for it because the market hasn't moved yet. This is like fascinating strategy stuff. Fascinating.

[James Killick]

Just on the point about law. It's also really important to move with the times. This has been the case in business for God knows how long.

[Martin Moore]

Sure.

[James Killick]

I'll give you a quick example though. So I know a lawyer in Sydney and you've got two choices. When people come to you with these AI generated legal documents. You can either say, no, no, we don't touch AI. You want, you want to work with me? You have to go through the full process. It's the big retainers and so on, like how it used to be or what he did, which I thought was very good. Quick and easy pivot. He just said, okay, no problem. I'm out here and I will review your AI generated content. That way he's not going to charge the same amount, but he's going to get more business because everyone is doing it. And now they're looking for the people that are embracing AI. I think it's a very smart move, very smart move.

[Martin Moore]

So you're actually adapting to the market as it moves, as opposed to resisting the market change.

[James Killick]

Correct.

[Martin Moore]

And this is what we're seeing in companies as well inside larger organizations. The resistance to change is not going to stop the change from coming. It just won't. And so being able to sell that change, the benefits of it, and why it can be good for the individuals is really where you need to be as a leader.

[Emma]

So, Marty, what you're saying is that people who are leaders who are still doing individual contributor work, their jobs are the ones that are going to be at risk?

[Martin Moore]

Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you think about this, right, you. If 80% of what I do is technical work, and that technical work can easily be replaced, then do they really need me for the other 20%? When there are leaders who are hyper effective at marshalling their resources and multiplying and leveraging what they've got, those are the leaders who are going to be sought after and in demand in the future. They're the ones who are getting promoted because they know how to take a vast array of different resources and turn them into something valuable for the business.

[Emma]

So the leaders who are doing work below their level, they're going to be exposed, oh, hugely.

[Martin Moore]

Big time. Big time. And there'll be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide because it will become obvious so quickly when they don't have the skills to know what else to do in order to leverage the value they have in their team. And that's why it's so critical to understand where the value is coming from and to get maximum leverage and to stay in your lane. You've got to work at the right level. And that's one of the things that we're so absolutely adamant about in leadership. Beyond the theory. Work at the right level, find the value, and hold people accountable for delivering it. Or as it turns out, hold AI agents accountable for delivering it.

[James Killick]

I'm actually really curious, Mari, about how roles are changing. Do you think they're Getting broader with AI or more narrow. And the reason I ask is because I know in software development, the techie side of all of this, we're looking at bringing together lots of different roles into one.

[Emma]

So.

[James Killick]

So it's no longer like a software developer, a product person, a UI UX person, it's a builder. Do you think that's going to happen more and more throughout different industries?

[Martin Moore]

Yes, I think it is going to happen more and more and I think it's a terrible mistake because I think one of the things that's always separated successful technology implementations from train wrecks is the separation of knowledge and the separation of perspectives. So if you've just got one person who's a builder, what are they building? Well, you know, it's the stuff that they want to build. You need business experts, deep business experts that tell you what's good and what's not good, what the object of the exercise is and what's valuable. Take that away and you're in trouble. And particularly when it comes to sponsorship of projects, who is the executive who's accountable for getting this stuff to work and how does it impact the business? And if you're crunching those roles together, you're losing that whole governance piece. So I think it's, it's a train wreck to do that.

[James Killick]

Interesting. Okay, so I was speaking to somebody at a barbecue. So he's an engineer, very well qualified, but he's risen up in the ranks and now probably 1 or 2% of his job is actually engineering, still needs to keep up and make sure he's got the appropriate qualifications. But he's managing people, he's managing the deals, the clients, the scope, all of the non billable work. But if he has a good team and he does his job properly, there's lots of billable work that goes on underneath him. So are you saying with what you just said, that a builder, a generalized role, can be good if they've moved up the ranks and they've actually been in the other roles? Or are you just saying bringing together a whole role like that is a bad idea?

[Martin Moore]

No, no, I'm sorry, James, I thought you meant bringing together all of those roles in the one individual. Now what you're talking about is someone who's at a senior level who has all of those separate skills underneath them. So they draw on a bunch of different perspectives, skills and experiences to get the overall picture of what they're trying to achieve. They're just one person who is a good decision maker with great judgment, who has a background in engineering, who oversees a team of people who deliver the results. That's the way it's always been for executive leadership. You're not into the detail. You've got to bring together a whole bunch of disparate resources with different disciplines in different domains and make that work and extract the value from that. My concern is about having one individual whom you expect to do all of those things.

[James Killick]

Yeah, okay, perfect. Because that role, what you described, is going to be the perfect manager of AI, going to have enough experience in all the different roles that they can employ all of the different agents in all of the different roles. It's, as you say, it's the same leadership principles that have always been. But I think it's going to be on steroids.

[Martin Moore]

Absolutely. And whether it's AI or whether it's a human, you've still got to have a great bullshit detector to know what you're getting back. That's it. That's a leadership skill.

[Emma]

So what can leaders do if they're not making the strategic decisions? They're not the ones setting the AI strategy. Maybe they've got directives coming down from the top. Their staff don't want to implement it because they think they're going to lose their jobs. What do they do? Do they take things on themselves? Do they learn out of hours? What is going to keep these leaders in their jobs and not only in their jobs, but getting the best jobs, getting the jobs in the best companies that they want and moving their career forward instead of just kind of stagnating and dealing with whatever comes.

[Martin Moore]

Well, look, let me just start by saying there's a massive difference between what a leader does and what an individual contributor does. So there will be a number of jobs replaced that are individual contributor roles that can be done by agents just as easily. What's not going to be replaced is that you still need those people who are going to integrate all that work. And I spoke about the Industrial Revolution, but even when we're talking about big software projects in the 90s and 2000s, the big ERP implementations, or business intelligence systems like the Oracles and SAPs and things like that, the technology was chosen by someone else. The middle managers had to make it work with all of the people and resources they had available to them. That's the same as it is now, okay? The hype's different and the speed is different, but the task is the same. So as a leader, the very best thing you can do is to strengthen your leadership skills, because you've got to Find a way to motivate people to give them the incentive and the knowledge about what they're doing to go forward. Clear objectives, strong accountabilities. You've got to be a fast decision maker. And you know me, and I've been banging on about this for 10 years. Speed of decision making. And it's a core part of what we do in leadership beyond the theory is how do I make really good decisions quickly? Because it's easy to make average decisions slow. And it's what most companies do. They look for consensus. They have this management by committee thing. But the skill of being able to make decisions quickly is all that much more important now. And it's a fundamental leadership discipline that if you didn't have this 10 years ago, you probably should have. It would have made your life a lot easier. But it's never too late to learn it because it's a discipline and it's a practical set of steps you can take.

[James Killick]

Yeah, completely agree. And I think when you have those fundamentals, the way to shine here is to take action inside of your business. What LBT teaches you to do, you asked. Okay. In the situation where, you know, there's directives coming down from above that may not make sense, what do you do? Okay, you shine, you become that AI authority, you bring it to the table. Don't assume that the people above you actually know what they're talking about. Likelihood is they do not.

[Martin Moore]

Well, that's the same as it ever was, too. Yeah, that's true. That's why we have the Peter Principle.

[James Killick]

What everyone really needs to realize, the listeners here, is that the opportunity is right now. There's not going to be a better opportunity in our lives ever again. The people that bury their heads in the sand, they might get on. They might even lose their jobs. The people that take action, they will move up the rankings. They may take that experience and start their own businesses. Who knows? But I can tell you they will 100% benefit from this window of opportunity.

[Martin Moore]

Yeah, I think that point in time principle is really important, James, because you've got the adoption curve. It's still an adoption curve. It's probably a little flatter and moving a bit faster than most, but you're still dealing with an adoption curve. And I think that those leaders who can work within the ambiguity and still get some direction coming through it. So we talk about things like no regrets, moves and getting a competitive advantage because you can make decisions faster in an ambiguous environment while everyone else is hesitating and taking a wait and See, approach, there's real competitive advantage here, not just for the company, but for you individually as a leader. And as you say, James, it's this opportunity to shine and to become the authority, the leader who knows how to integrate all this stuff and create value from it. That's going to be gold, absolute gold.

[James Killick]

And can I, can I make a point about your program? I know you don't like to plug

[Emma]

it too much, but please, we'd love you to.

[Martin Moore]

There's one thing that I'm a bit, I'm a bit shy. I might leave.

[James Killick]

There's the one thing that I don't think people really realize. Right. There's, there's this great content, you know, two amazing people leading it, but it's the community. You can actually see what other leaders are doing. You can discuss this in open forums in a moment where technology like AI is throwing everything out the window. You need to be around people. This is critical.

[Martin Moore]

Yeah, absolutely. Very true. And of course, we've been our own crash test dummies on AI, so we've gradually introduced different AI tools in a leadership beyond the theory to enhance it.

[James Killick]

Yes.

[Martin Moore]

And even though the leadership principles don't change, the, the AI tools, people love them. They get in there and go, oh my God, this, this, this value workflow generator is sensational. Like, I've got so much value out of. I just went down a rabbit hole last night and spent three hours in there because it's so good. And so the introduction of the AI tools, which by the way, is all Emma, none of that's me. But those AI tools massively enhance the already solid foundational principles and, and the community's ability to engage on that is, yeah, highly valuable.

[James Killick]

Yeah.

[Emma]

So I want to take that and turn that into what does that mean for people day to day? Their principles of their jobs might be very similar, but implementing AI can take away a lot of the chaff. And James, I'd love for you to talk about when you're mapping out your workflows and you're deciding like, what do I AI and what do I not AI, what do I keep human being able to differentiate between those things? What you should still keep doing, what needs human oversight? What can be completely AI'd? I think if an individual leader or, or individual contributor can work out the difference between those things, you're getting 5x10x more done and you've got time left over to do the things that you really love doing instead of doing the shit you don't like doing.

[James Killick]

And I think that's the best place to start in a world where most people blank slates with AI, I would automate the things you don't like doing first, assuming that they are automatable, which we'll come to. Leave yourself with those things that bring you energy as a leader. If you're enjoying your day to day, people are going to enjoy working with you. Simple as that. You'll bring the energy, they'll take that energy and run with it in terms of what is automatable. So let's take a step back. This is how I always do it and how I teach clients to do it. You want to look at your day as a workflow or look at your tasks as a workflow. Typically you're taking an individual on a journey. Right. You know, the journey starts with you and there's a certain amount of fulfillment and that gets them to their desired outcome. What are all of the tasks on that workflow? What takes you from A to Z? Then you're going to put all of your hours against it. You know, where are the big blockers? Where are the things that are just repeatable actions? These are usually the quick wins. And what you're left with is often those eyeball situations. Where can you use what makes you human, individual to your advantage? Where do you need to do deals with other human beings? Where do you need to be in the room with your direct reports? And if you do more of that, more inspiration and leave the AI to do the grunt work, then you're going to win.

[Martin Moore]

Yeah. So have I said this is the same as it always was? Because you're talking about continuous improvement.

[Emma]

Yeah.

[Martin Moore]

You're talking about Kaizen, Lean, Six Sigma, all the stuff that's exactly the same about how do I take a process, make it more efficient?

[James Killick]

Yeah.

[Martin Moore]

How do I make it better, faster, cheaper? And that's what you're doing, using the AI tool to help you understand that and do it better.

[James Killick]

Yeah.

[Martin Moore]

Which is fantastic. Right. But in our Deliver Value module we talk about specifically better, faster, cheaper. Like how do you create that culture of people trying to understand what's causing them roadblocks and, and friction in their day jobs and working out how to eliminate those.

[James Killick]

Yeah.

[Martin Moore]

And that's exactly what we're talking about here. But the tools enable you to do that even better than they used to.

[James Killick]

Correct.

[Martin Moore]

Which is awesome.

[Emma]

So there are a lot of people who are saying, okay, AI is fantastic. It's taking away a lot of that lower level work. But then we have this situation where the lower level work is getting done by humans anymore. They're not able to work their way up the ladder and learn on the job. So what are we doing about replacing the talent pipeline?

[Martin Moore]

Well, this is a very, very important question and I think we're already seeing this play out in the consulting industry. So the big consulting firms in the US have massively decimated their graduate intakes. And let's say a firm like McKinsey, let's say they used to take in 500 graduates a year out of the top universities and colleges in the US Maybe now they're taking a quarter of that, maybe less. But how did you ever build someone who was as Expert as a McKinsey partner? Well, they started as a consultant and they moved to engagement manager and they moved to associate partner. They moved their way up through the ranks, learning at each level and they get experience in multiple companies, blue chip companies, multiple geographical regions. By the time they hit associate partner, these guys were like, they were gurus, absolute gurus. Now it's fair enough that you can replace that work, but then what happens when you get to em, when you get to associate partner, when you get to partner, where is that pipeline coming from? You're just not building those skills in a deep way anymore. So AI had been a shitload smarter between now and when you want to produce a McKinsey partner. Because at the moment you've just decimated that talent pipeline.

[James Killick]

It's a bit like an aging population, right?

[Martin Moore]

Sort of is. And I'm closer to the other end than you, James, so tell me about it, mate. But it is like an aging population. It is, yeah, yeah. So replacing the skills and knowledge and traditionally and typically what happens is that tools and technology and innovation come in to replace that. And so yes, we're seeing that. But what happens to the people who are supposed to be overseeing the outcomes and making sure that the outcomes are accurate and they put their judgment over the top and they're fit for purpose. And we're already seeing a bunch of complete cock ups in the consulting sector where reports are going out that are either partially or fully AI generated, where leaks of information occur, a whole range of things that are now really putting pressure on the consulting sector.

[Emma]

So what's the answer to this? Because I feel like we're at an impasse with do I take AI on? Do I not? Is it going to change my job? Isn't it?

[Martin Moore]

Well, personally I think there's no, there's no choice to make about whether or not you take AI on because you have to take it on. Otherwise you'll be competed out of your market very, very quickly because other firms are.

[Emma]

Do you think this is the same in every single job?

[Martin Moore]

No, no, it's not the same in every job. So for example, if you look at blue collar jobs, you've got these things that have traditionally been the blue ribbon professions, medicine, law, finance, et cetera. And then you've had these jobs for people that they weren't looked upon particularly well. Plumbing, electrical engineers, you know, jobs that now are going to be absolutely vital in the future. Much more stable, much more secure and provide a much better longevity of role because that work still needs doing and it needs people to do it. It's a long time before you're going to see robots can do that. And even when we talk to our manufacturing clients about how they're going with robotic welders and machines that are coming out of the Europe and China that are doing that type of work, there's still a lot of work that has to be done by a human, even in those operations where they've got a high deployment of robotic technology. So now we're seeing that some industries won't be disrupted anywhere near as quickly because of the physical element to the work and others can be disrupted relatively fast. But you've still got this pipeline problem because at some point you need a human who's there to understand the process and what's going on and to take those learnings forward. So you might have less consultants and less engagement managers, but you can still cover a lot more client work with those teams.

[James Killick]

Okay, I agree.

[Martin Moore]

You agree?

[James Killick]

I do, yeah.

[Martin Moore]

That look on your face, James, I thought James is going to give me an uppercut here and I'm ready for it. Go mate, off you go.

[James Killick]

No, no, no, no uppercut. So for me, you know, you asked how do they get involved, whether they should or they shouldn't. It is about taking action, as I mentioned before, but it's also about getting runs on the ladder. I think of AI a lot like driving. You don't have to know how the car works to be a good driver. What you need is hours behind the wheel. And that's the same with AI. When you start you're playing around with chat to go to the next level, you have to experiment. It's just like driving manual transmission, after months or years of doing it becomes automatic. So I think business leaders need to allow their direct reports to make mistakes. That's the only way that they're going to learn. And yes, sometimes people are going to publish A report that's completely AI generated, it's going to be a mistake. But they need that, the managers need that, they need to be able to see it. How are they going to keep the humans in the loop? Everything here is new. No one has done this before. So we've got a trailblaze, we've got

[Martin Moore]

to give it a go. Yes. And there are no real standards and there are no real processes that are already in place. You can take off the shelf.

[James Killick]

Yes.

[Martin Moore]

So you don't have an ISO standard for how to do this stuff, whereas you do in a whole bunch of other areas around, you know, risk and governance and technology and other things. So it's just not there.

[James Killick]

You just need your fundamental leadership skills.

[Martin Moore]

Absolutely, absolutely. And I know you're asking the questions in, but I have a question for you, James. Are you thinking that this type of infrastructure can and will be built out in respect of AI, or do you think it's moving too fast for that to catch up? So I mentioned ISO standards, for example. Do you see those ever coming in behind this or, or are we sort of in a world where it's going to be the Wild west for the foreseeable future?

[James Killick]

I hope very much that we start seeing these standards. I feel as though enterprise organizations are not taking a lot of action because these don't exist. So we're having the small to medium sized businesses take a lot of the risk at the moment.

[Martin Moore]

Right.

[James Killick]

And take a lot of those first moves. But people need direction 100%. I think what Anthropic has done is seem to be the right move in that they've not deployed their top of the range model to everyone. They've given it to some of these bigger organizations so that they can judge the cybersecurity threat. And that's great. And they're going to start releasing that slowly to more organizations. But you know, who knows whether it's going to remain the wild, wild west and for how long. This is one of the unknowns.

[Martin Moore]

Yeah. And interestingly, obviously some companies are being a little bit more thoughtful about the implications of what they're doing. Yes. Does that just give their slower competitors a chance to catch up? So is OpenAI rejoicing in the fact that Anthropic is going slow?

[James Killick]

Well, Anthropic aren't going slow. Anthropic have become the biggest AI business in the world.

[Martin Moore]

Yes, but I'm sorry, slowing down for the sake of safety and understandability as opposed to just pushing through. They could have put Mythos out everywhere. Right.

[James Killick]

They could have.

[Martin Moore]

They could have given it to everyone. And they chose not to because they see the bigger picture. But does that just let less ethical firms overtake or catch up?

[James Killick]

The thing is, they're not slowing down. Right, right. They are slowing the public release, but they're still building. Right, right, right, right. So they're not actually stopping. And I, I think that what they've done is a genius marketing play. They got to the top and then they're saying this thing. And it doesn't matter whether everyone says yes or everyone says no. Now they're seen to be this ethical organization. They were just the first to say it, the fastest to, to bring it.

[Martin Moore]

Well, yeah, and. And they. But they're putting their wallet where their mouth is because they also knock back that huge U.S. defense contract.

[James Killick]

That's true.

[Martin Moore]

Yeah. So they're putting their wallet where their mouth is, which is sort of interesting. Going to be really interesting in the next 12 to 18 months. See how that plays.

[Emma]

I want to bring this back to someone that may be listening right now who's going, you know what? I'm not techie. I haven't had to do techy things in my job. I'm not in it. Which is a whole other conversation in itself around what IT leaders are doing at the moment or not doing. For someone who is listening to this and goes, like, I just don't have the skills. I don't even know where to start. James, what would you say to them?

[James Killick]

It's a bit of an oversimplification, but if you can communicate well, you can work well with AI, and that's where I would start.

[Martin Moore]

I think that's a great point because I can see just the massive difference that you can get in terms of value from the existing LLMs. If you are a good prompter, if you can prompt precisely in your communication and the way you express yourself and what you're trying to achieve as a result from a query, if you can do that really, really well in a refined and sophisticated way, you get much better answers than if you're just, you know, rather clumsy with it.

[James Killick]

Yeah.

[Martin Moore]

And I've seen that play out with friends and family already. So that's an interesting case study of one. But yeah, so it's. So it's a fact. It's a proven fact. It's a case study of one. Beware of research, everyone. So, yeah. So definitely getting used to it. I think this concept of being a driver, you need to spend time in the car. You don't get in the car and go, well, that didn't feel comfortable. Let me pull out the manual and see how the turbocharger works and what it takes to kick it in at certain revs. You don't do that. You just keep driving until driving is second nature. And this is why your analogy is so good, James. And I think when you're talking about leaders who think, I'm not a techie, you don't need to be a techie. You've got to get comfortable with the environment you're working in, which is taking your leadership fundamentals, taking the people and understanding what they do best, what the technology can replace and what it can do best, and combine all of those resources you have to drive value through your team and company.

[Sam]

That's it.

[Martin Moore]

So forget the techo stuff. Be a good driver.

[James Killick]

Be a good driver and you can accelerate.

[Martin Moore]

You can accelerate with a good instructor. You can accelerate with a good instructor.

[Sam]

You can.

[Martin Moore]

Yes. And the instructor should also have a brake on his or her side of the car so that if you completely screw it up, they can stop you from crashing.

[James Killick]

I can't think of any more car things to say.

[Martin Moore]

Well, I don't think we need to. Yeah. And if you get a flat tire, here's the number to call. No kidding.

[James Killick]

So I do fear that some people get a bit worried when they hear the word prompting. And I actually think AIs moved on now with the likes of Whisper Flow, where we've got to a point where context is king. So what you can do now is just double tap that FN button for those of you that know Whisper Flow, that essentially initiates the recording, and then you speak. If you know what you're talking about. You give AI all of this beautiful context. You can also add Those folders, those SOPs that you've created as a good leader. This is what will make AI better for you than your competitors. This is the reason to start now, and this is what will get you ahead.

[Martin Moore]

That is a great point, Marty.

[Emma]

When we were doing our prep session for this podcast, one of the things that you said that I wrote down that I loved was, leading AI is inward, leading humans is outward. Can you flesh that out for me?

[Martin Moore]

I can, yes. The thing I was getting to was something later evolved into the concept of you're just managing a collection of human mechanical resources, information assets, and so forth. And the early point I was making was about the fact that to lead AI, you need skill in understanding what you're trying to achieve and having some sort of ability to extract that Information using the AI tool with people, you're leading a slightly different way. You're leading with an outward focus on them so that you're looking at how they behave, how they perform, what drives them, what skills they have, how far you can stretch them. All of those things that are the nuances of people. Leadership in a one on one, conversational, very human way where you need empathy and compassion. And your AI is a tool. Okay? Now, I know other people who are tools, but AI is actually a tool, okay? And that's. And that's the difference. So I think of a very inward focus with the AI tools and an outward focus with the humans so that you are connecting with them.

[Emma]

I think that's a great way to frame it because people can't really conceptualize what does it mean to lead AI? Often we hear, well, we'll be leading AI teams. What does that even mean, James?

[James Killick]

Yeah, I think Marty's point is exactly right. When you're dealing with humans, you've got to have that empathy. You can actually lean on humans and their expertise. When it comes to AI, it's so much more about you. You have to have that empathy internally. You have to have your decision making process internally. Because as we've already talked about, AI is going to say that you're brilliant, that all of your ideas are fantastic. It has access to all of this information, some of it good, some of it bad. So it is. It's not a totally different set of skills. That's what we need to get to. Taking the skills and internalizing them versus taking the skills with humans and externalizing them.

[Martin Moore]

Yeah, very, very much so. Very much so.

[Emma]

Guys, we've covered a lot of ground. I'm going to ask each of you individually, what is the one mindset shift that our listeners need to have to put themselves in the best position to embrace AI as a leader? James, I'll start with you.

[James Killick]

Okay. I'm going to go on the AI side. So what AI unlocks is an ability to work multiple things in parallel. This is a complete mindset shift. This is like if you take my cooking analogy, you know, as a chef, you're not going to just sit and wait for the potatoes to boil. In fact, you're going to go and you're going to move on to the other dishes. You're going to get them all working in parallel. And so what you need to think of about being truly efficient with AI is that you can start one task and you can prep them all. In fact, AI works really well if you Picture it again as a workflow, but this time I want you to think of the critical pieces of the puzzle. So if you used to do a hundred percent of a task, now you only do 20%. The 10% planning, which is critical, that brings your experience in. And the 10% at the end with the human in the loop, this is what makes it human, makes it yours. The 80%, the grunt work gets done by AI. So as you start to steer your day, you can start that planning off for multiple tasks, and then you can come back to them and give the AI that critical input. So in a day where before you might just do one thing, you start to do 5 or 6. When you get your head around this, efficiency is 10x.

[Sam]

Right?

[Martin Moore]

So when I listen to that, James, it sounds to me like you're the head chef and you've got this room of sous chefs there who are going and doing all that work because you've given them the right direction in what to do. And still that feels to me like individual contributor work. So let me talk about my view of the leadership work that I think comes now.

[James Killick]

Right.

[Martin Moore]

The very best thing that leaders can do, and 99% of the people who listen to this podcast are leaders, the very best thing you can do is get the fundamentals right. The task is the same. You are there to generate the maximum value you can for your business. So you've got to understand where the value is. You've got to be able to isolate it, to communicate and to put it on a work program, and then to make sure it actually delivers the value you thought it would. And then you've got to be the type of person who has the ability to lead others, whether that's an AI agent or it's a human, you've got to know how to get the most out of them. So you've got to be able to have those difficult conversations. And I think some of those are going to get even more difficult because you're going to be pushing back on people above you who have unrealistic expectations. But what we have now with AI, the irony is that will massively improve your ability to have one on one conversations, because you can capture histories and previous conversations and look for trends and find where you should go with your next agenda. Like the AI tool just makes that leadership task so much more effective and so much more accurate. But you've still got to have the human skill of being able to do that. So being able to handle conflict and have a really resilient nature, which you really going to need be able to work at the right level so that you're doing the work of leadership and you're not diving into that detail that people seem to be so worried about and then handle the ambiguity that's in front of you and to be able to say nothing's certain. But I know that this is a no regrets move and we're going to push forward on it. So these core leadership skills are still fundamental if you can actually acquire them. And then of course, in execution, it's about decision making. So making really good decisions quickly and then having single points of accountability. And now your accountabilities may be spread between humans and AI agents. And that's okay because it's got to be really clear to the humans and the AI agents who's accountable for what. Like, let's be really clear about who's doing which things and where I'm expecting the outputs to come from and how they integrate. And that's leadership. It's the same as it was 20 years ago. If you're a really good leader, then the AI age will massively increase your effectiveness. If you don't know how to lead, you're still back where you were floundering as you were 10 years ago.

[Emma]

Marty, that almost sounds like our leadership beyond the theory framework. I like the way you did that.

[Martin Moore]

It's just in my head, right? It's how I live because I develop these principles over such a long period of time. And the tools that I developed in the trenches through practice, being in there every single day at an executive level and seeing what makes people tick and what makes value get delivered is just second nature to me. And that's basically what I put. It's in the book, it's in the Leadership beyond the Theory program. It's how to lead Better for Value Results from leadership. That's what we're after.

[Emma]

Guys, what a great conversation. Thank you both for bringing your wisdom. We're going to come back in, I don't know, let's say six months and see what's change what's still the same. Have a little chitchat about the next step of AI, but for now, thank you so much. Leaders and what they can do in 2026. In the age of AI, it's the wild west, but we've given them some food for thought. So thank you both.

[Martin Moore]

Thanks him. And thank you, James, our resident AI expert. Mate. We really appreciate what you do and the value you bring to us.

[James Killick]

Thank you so much. F.

[Sam]

So that's the episode I really

[Martin Moore]

hope you got a lot of value out of it.

[Sam]

Before you go, one quick thing. If you've been sitting on the fence for the last year or two, promising yourself that you do leadership beyond the theory once things settle down, I'm going to save you some time. Things aren't going to settle down. There's always going to be another fire to fight or another restructure to plan, or just another quarter where you have to play the meat in the sandwich. You are probably so buried in work that you've lost sight of why you're there. Nothing changes until you change it. And the June cohort is open right now. Everything we talked about today rewards the leaders who move first and it leaves the rest behind. So don't be the one who sits still. Doors close Friday 26 June. After that, the next intake isn't until October. That's four more months of exactly what

[Martin Moore]

you're doing right now.

[Sam]

And with the speed AI is moving at, the urgency for you to strengthen the foundations of your leadership capability is ever increasing. This isn't a Gamble. More than 2,800 leaders from all over the world have done leadership beyond the theory. And 99% recommend comes with a 100% no questions asked money back guarantee. So it's completely risk free. If you've been on the fence, this is your nudge. Get off the fence. Head to leadershipbeyondthetheory.com or just hit the link in the show notes. Nine weeks to promotion.

[Martin Moore]

Ready leadership.

[Sam]

I'll see you in there. And in the meantime, I know you'll

[Martin Moore]

do everything that you can to be a no bullshit leader. Sam.