The last month took me on a whirlwind tour: 8 keynotes across Boston, San Francisco, Hamburg, Rome, and beyond. And no matter where I went, from Silicon Valley to Europe, I kept hearing the same 3 questions from leaders:
Where and how should we actually invest in ML/AI?
How do we keep our teams focused under uncertainty?
What do future-ready leadership and capabilities look like?
The future isn’t built by technologists alone. It needs leaders who understand the human brain under stress, under pressure, and under transformation.
Because human learning is not linear. It’s deeply emotional.
So let’s answer the questions:
🔸Where and how should we actually invest in ML/AI?
Follow the A.I.M. + P.D. Framework strictly (developed by yours truly 🙂)
A – Automate
Invest in reducing repetitive, low-value tasks → efficiency + cost savings.
Example: customer service chatbots, document processing.
I – Inform
Use AI to generate insights and guide smarter decisions → better outcomes.
Example: predictive analytics, demand forecasting, risk modeling.
M – Monetize
Develop new products, services, or revenue streams enabled by AI.
Example: personalized digital services, AI-driven platforms, new business models.
P – Pain Points
Always start with the business problems that matter most.
Example: supply chain bottlenecks, customer churn, fraud detection.
D – Data Reality
Assess data availability, quality, and infrastructure before scaling.
Example: invest in clean, accessible, and secure data pipelines.
It’s crucial to stop playing around with AI and to see it as an accelerator for real business use cases. MIT finds that 95% of AI projects fail – and the reason is that people invest time into solutions no one asked for. Work from pain points backwards.
Easy answer: Invest in AI following the A.I.M.P.D. framework
🔸 How do we keep our teams focused under uncertainty? And what do future-ready leadership and capabilities look like?
The best-performing teams I’ve seen across industries reframe mistakes as collective data. Every failure becomes information for the whole team to grow from. Leaders build trust into the process by giving out ownership to each individual, involving people bottom-up, making transformation participatory instead of imposed.
Here’s my G.R.O.W. Framework for keeping teams focused & building future-ready leadership:
G – Gather Learning
Reframe mistakes as collective data → every failure is shared information.
R – Responsibility
Give ownership to individuals → trust grows when people truly own outcomes.
O – Openness
Involve people bottom-up, make transformation participatory, not imposed.
W – Withstand
Build resilience under uncertainty → stronger mindsets for complexity, ambiguity, and change.
Your employees fear isn’t really about machines replacing us. It’s about us falling behind: mentally, emotionally, and professionally.
The next frontier isn’t therefore more dashboards or tools. It’s human capabilities enhanced with technology for:
– Better Decision-making under complexity
– Stronger Mental resilience under uncertainty
– Higher Trust in a post-truth world
Repeat: Decision-Making. Mental Focus. Trust. Those are the 3 key variables of success, other than investing into the right technology.
This is the “other side” of digital transformation. Innovation dies without psychological safety. AI won’t replace jobs. But mindsets will.
The next decade belongs to the companies who get this balance right.