Rethinking Leadership Pipelines in the Age of AI

What’s Lost When Early-Career Experience Changes

As AI takes on more entry-level work, organizations risk losing something important—the learning that used to come with those jobs.

Early-career roles have always been where people start to understand how the business really works. They are where judgment begins to form, and where individuals learn how to navigate trade-offs.

They’re also where people develop the skills they’ll need to lead in an AI-enabled environment.

For example:

• Applying context and judgment to AI outputs
• Knowing when to step in and override AI decisions
• Adapting as tools and ways of working change
• Working effectively across human and AI workflows

These aren’t technical skills you can easily replace or fast-track. They are built through experience, often gradually, and in ways that are difficult to replicate.

“As AI assumes tasks, organizations are failing to replace the learning those tasks created. Leadership capability is not taught after promotion. It’s accumulated before it,” says Jerry Collier, who leads Korn Ferry’s Assessment & Succession Practice in EMEA.

The Delayed Cost for Organizations

Entry-level job cuts will create a “delayed cost explosion,” warns Collier.

When companies reduce early-career roles, they don’t eliminate the need for leadership. They agree to buy it later at a premium.

“The savings show up this quarter. The bill arrives five years later, with interest,” he says.

This is because external hiring is more expensive, time to effectiveness is longer, and the risk of leadership failure increases. Cultural misalignment and trust gaps can follow.

Internal leaders arrive with:

• Embedded networks
• Institutional memory
• Cultural fluency
• Informal credibility

“None of that can be accelerated, no matter how strong the CV,” Collier adds.

Why Leadership Succession Planning Needs to Evolve

Succession planning has followed a predictable path. People build experience gradually, take on more responsibility, and over time are seen as ready to lead.

In practice, that means real succession visibility often only begins once people reach senior-level roles.

That model is now under pressure.

“Succession systems assume leaders are built the same way they were 20 years ago, even though the work that shaped them no longer exists.”
Jerry Collier, Solution Leader, EMEA Assessment & Succession, Korn Ferry

As AI reduces and reshapes entry-level jobs, early-career talent doesn't get the same opportunities to build capability through real decisions and trade-offs. Over time, that can leave fewer people ready to step into leadership roles.

In most organizations, that risk is hard to spot early. A clear view of leadership potential often only emerges later in someone’s career, by which point much of their development has already happened.

87% of organizations have visibility into leadership potential and readiness at the C-suite level. This drops to fewer than 3 in 10 for mid-level and emerging leaders.
Korn Ferry Talent Suite research

When early capability is thinner and visibility comes late, the pipeline is weaker, and there is less time to fix it.

“By the time someone shows up on a succession list, it may already be too late to build the skills they need to step into the role,” warns Collier.

Building Leadership Capability in a Human + AI Environment

With changing expectations of entry-level hiring and roles, CHROs need to be far more deliberate about how future leaders are developed.

What people do in these roles now will shape the leaders you have later.

"The real risk isn’t necessarily fewer entry roles, but the lack of effective early-career learning.”
Jerry Collier, Korn Ferry

Capability has to be built by moving early-career talent closer to real decisions sooner, not sheltering them in junior work, says Collier.

“Stretch, sponsorship, and exposure to unfinished problems matter more than hierarchy,” he adds.

Here’s what that means in practice.

Identify Which Early Experiences Actually Build Judgment

If you’re not clear on how leadership capability is built in your business, it becomes very hard to develop it.

As AI takes on more of the routine work, early-career roles offer fewer natural opportunities to see how decisions are made. That makes these experiences harder to build.

What to do

• Pinpoint where early-career talent are already exposed to real decisions
• Define the specific situations where judgment is built in your business
• Build those situations into early roles and project assignments as standard practice

Redesign Roles Around Decision Exposure

If early roles are mostly about execution, people may deliver work but miss how decisions are made and why they are made. That makes it harder to build judgment over time.

As AI handles more of the doing, early talent may see outputs, but not the thinking behind them.

What to do

• Redesign entry-level roles to include ownership of small decisions
• Involve junior talent directly in problem-solving work
• Structure roles so decision-making is part of the day-to-day work

Build Sponsorship into Early Careers

Without access to senior leaders, early talent can miss out on the experiences that accelerate development.

As roles become more AI-driven, there are fewer informal opportunities to learn through observation, which makes sponsorship more important.

What to do

• Assign senior sponsors to early-career talent with clear ownership for their development
• Encourage sponsors to involve them in real projects and leadership discussions
• Review sponsorship outcomes in talent reviews

Accelerate Stretch and Leadership Exposure

If people aren’t given opportunities to step beyond what they already know, they won’t build the capability the business will soon need from them.

That means giving early talent exposure to work that pushes them. This could be leading a small project, working through a complex problem, or contributing to decisions that carry real consequences.

What to do

• Pull forward stretch assignments that build leadership capability
• Rotate early talent across teams or priorities
• Involve them in work that carries real complexity or ambiguity

Track How Leadership Capability Is Developing

Performance alone doesn’t show how someone is growing. It tells you what they deliver, not how they handle complexity or decision-making over time.

"You need to be open to the fact that people emerge at different stages. You need a living, evolving view of your talent, not one fixed at a single point in time.”
Tierney Remick, Vice Chairman of Korn Ferry’s Board & CEO Practice

As roles change, it becomes harder to see who is gaining the right experience without tracking it more deliberately.

What to do

• Track where people are exposed to real decisions and complexity
• Define simple indicators to assess how capability is developing
• Review how individuals are progressing over time in talent discussions

How to Rethink Succession Planning to Protect the Pipeline

If leadership capability is built differently, succession planning needs to reflect that shift.

That means rethinking your approach now, before gaps begin to show.

Here’s what that looks like in practice.

1. Redefine What “Ready” Really Means

In many organizations, being “ready” still means time in role and strong performance.

That doesn’t always show whether someone can handle the decisions and pressure that come with leadership today, especially in an AI-enabled environment.

Only 22% of organizations are currently planning leadership succession with AI readiness in mind.
Korn Ferry's 2026 TA Trends

What to do

• Update succession criteria so decision-making and judgment are explicitly assessed
• Define what “ready” looks like for each critical role
• Use real scenarios in talent reviews to test how people would handle leadership decisions before promotion

2. Start Succession Planning Earlier in People’s Careers

If you only look at succession planning at senior levels, you are seeing the pipeline too late.

By that point, gaps are harder to fix, and options are more limited.

“By the time someone shows up on a succession slate, a lot of their trajectory is already set,” warns Remick.

What to do

• Extend succession planning into mid-level roles
• Ask leaders to identify who is coming through in their teams
• Review pipeline depth across all levels as part of regular talent reviews

3. Replace Instinct with Evidence

Succession decisions often rely on reputation or visibility. That can mask whether someone has actually demonstrated the capability to step up.

As roles become more complex, those signals are harder to rely on.

60% of leaders say succession decisions are some times based primarily on intuition rather than data.
‍Korn Ferry Talent Suite research

What to do

• Use the same criteria across all candidates in succession discussions
• Ask for clear examples to support every succession recommendation
• Base succession decisions on demonstrated capability, not reputation or visibility

4. Separate Performance from Potential

High performance does not always mean leadership readiness.

As work changes, it becomes even harder to assume that strong performers will step into leadership roles successfully.

What to do

• Assess potential independently from performance ratings
• Look for indicators of judgment and learning agility
• Avoid promoting based on delivery alone

5. Put Pipeline Depth on the Board Agenda

Focusing only on immediate successors hides succession risk further down the pipeline. That risk often sits years out, where gaps are harder to see and slower to fix.

What to do

• Report on pipeline depth beyond named successors
• Highlight where you have gaps and where you have strength
• Connect succession data to long-term business risk