Never Say Never

Gary Burnison is CEO of Korn Ferry and the author of Love, Hope & Leadership: A Special Edition.

"What are boards looking for now in terms of different types of leaders?”

It was just a few days ago—a question from a financial analyst as we were wrapping up our firm’s quarterly earnings call.

I didn’t hesitate: Embrace ambiguity … That’s screaming off the page … the ability to embrace ambiguity—and their leadership capacity to enable others to navigate through it.

Surely, every generation has had its inflection points. But what we're seeing today, especially with AI, is incredible. And it’s going to be the differentiator between someone who is going to lead an organization for the next 5 years and somebody who did it 10 years ago.

Having said that, despite all of the technological innovations of the past decade, people still make businesses successful. Human interaction and connectivity still matter. And leadership definitely matters most.

Yet, profound change is at our doorstep. And there’s a world of difference between merely dealing with the ambiguity of innovation and thriving in the midst of it.

“There will come the day when you will fly in the sky—anywhere you want to go.”

It was a conversation I was having just the other day with two of my adult children. “You’ll fly to the grocery store and to work,” I continued.

“We work remote—remember?” they chimed in with a smile.

“I’m serious. I have more conviction about this now than at any point in my life.”

As we look ahead, many leaders are equal parts worried, wary, and in wonder. But here’s the thing—as leaders, if we view something like AI only as a threat, we will never see the opportunity. We will be myopic about reality and blind to possibility—and so will everyone around us.

The world is not binary. And the leaders who are fluent in the language of change, deftly moving themselves and others through the range of emotion—from resistance and regret to resilience and reinvention—are those who will rise above the rest.

The real danger is in clinging to yesterday’s thinking—the always and the never, the either and or, the but instead of and. That’s what keeps us from evolving.

I would never do that. It’s so easy to critique instead of construct, especially when the answers are not apparent and the way forward is not clear. Leaders need to channel creative chaos and constructive conflict into collective genius.

If only I had known. We hear these five words constantly. They describe so much about AI and this world of perpetual uncertainty. As leaders, embracing ambiguity means asking more questions than having the answers—especially about megatrends, our businesses, and people.

Never say never. Never is a dangerous word. It can keep us from opening our minds to accurately perceive the rapidly changing reality of today. Before we give in to thoughts that we’ll somehow disintermediate ourselves, let’s keep our focus on how the “what” intersects with our “why.”

You gotta believe. As leaders, we’re in the belief business. Our job is to help others believe—and then enable that belief to become reality.

The more attached we are to the way things have been, the more fearful we’ll be of what those things might become.

Let’s remember—as leaders, we can outsource effort but not emotional intelligence. That’s how we’ll put our I in AI. And never say never.

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