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As we near the end of 2025, we've been reflecting on the ideas that have especially provoked us or captured our imagination from the collective: AI's impact on leadership. New organizational structures. How people are innovating and coping with relentless disruption. These themes emerged again and again. Here are the 2025 ideas from the collective that really got our wheels turning: |
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The ideas that lit us up in 2025 |
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"In the AI era, traditional organizational structures will flip themselves. It'll be an inverted pyramid, just like a service model." —Gary Briggs, interim CMO of Open AI
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As AI accelerates work, amplifies individual capability, and collapses layers of coordination, many organizations will move from traditional top-heavy, control-oriented pyramids to inverted pyramids where value-creation happens closest to customers, and leaders serve as enablers rather than controllers. What is driving the shift in org structure? "I think we're approaching a moment where AI may give employees better judgment, not just better tools," says Anthony Quigley. "If AI companions increasingly sit alongside frontline teams, leadership can focus on embedding values and decision logic into systems that support consistent action across the enterprise." |
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"AI will invariably reprogram organizations. We have a choice to drive the change or be reprogrammed, ourselves." — Naveen Agarwal, Global Advisor, former Chief Customer Officer of Prudential
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Every organization is being rewritten—including its workflows, decision-making, roles, even culture. AI doesn't just augment what exists; it fundamentally alters how work gets done. The question isn't whether your organization will be reprogrammed, but who's writing the code. What does it mean to lead the reprogramming? "Most leaders are waiting for clarity before they act," says Managing Partner Sabrina Clark. "But clarity is the reward for action, not the prerequisite. The organizations thriving right now aren't the ones with perfect AI strategies; they're the ones asking better questions and learning faster from the answers." |
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THE WORLD IS FLAT (ONCE AGAIN)
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"Our top talent is making it clear: They're here to build the future with AI. While many companies think of offshore teams as execution centers, we think of them as innovation hubs, including our rapidly growing Bangalore office. The companies that recognize this shift and organize accordingly will win the AI talent war." —Robert Chatwani, President & GM, Growth of Docusign
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Geography once determined access to opportunity. Remote work flattened that barrier—temporarily. Now AI work is creating a new hierarchy: Headquarters get innovation, satellite offices get infrastructure. But the best global talent isn't accepting that division anymore, and they're making their leverage clear. What happens when your distributed workforce demands distributed opportunity? "This isn't about office politics—it's about competitive advantage," says Venture Partner Marc Winter. "If you're relegating your Bangalore engineers to data cleanup while competitors are giving them AI model development, you're not just risking attrition. You're building a two-tier culture that tells half your talent they're support staff, not innovators. The world got flat. Your org chart didn't." |
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"I don't think there is any net-new skill set that's being required of leaders in the AI era. But if you weren't good at creating followership or engendering trust as a leader before, the cost will be much higher now." —Micky Onvural, CMO of TIAA
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AI demands new leadership capabilities and exposes the absence of foundational ones. Leaders who struggled to build trust, inspire commitment, or create clarity in stable times will find those deficits catastrophic amid AI-driven transformation. The pace of change, the ambiguity of outcomes, and the anxiety of workforce displacement mean people will only follow leaders they genuinely trust.
Why does AI amplify the cost of mediocre leadership? "When everything's changing and nobody has answers, people follow leaders who've earned their trust. If you haven't built that foundation, no amount of AI fluency will save you," says Senior Partner Nikki Cicerani |
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"Leadership has always been about having the operating agility to manage tensions without compromise. But today, those tensions are so intense that we see managing them as a core competency—perhaps even the most important element—of leadership." —Matt Breitfelder, CHRO of Apollo
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Harvard Business School's Linda Hill describes the concept of a T-shaped worker as one who has a depth of knowledge on a subject (the vertical line) while able to use that knowledge to interface and collaborate with a wide range of experts (the horizontal line). Think of it as a generalized specialist. The concept is most common in computer science fields, but in the AI era, T-shaped people are more crucial than ever. How can leaders hold up a mirror to themselves and ensure both they and their teams have the right skillset? "We've seen organizations constructing scaffolding for new technologies, like AI offices and leadership positions. But those spaces also need to fill in the psychological gaps to create constructive change," says Sabrina Clark |
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"'Taste' is one of the essential capabilities in the era of AI. You hear a lot about 'design taste,' but I have been thinking about 'taste' in the context of business strategy. 'Strategic taste' is about designing and architecting value in different ways—for customers, employees, partners, and shareholders. When do you agree with AI's analysis, and when do you push back on it? With so many possible paths that AI provides, which one do you choose?"—Harry Laplanche, AI Strategy & Transformation of Panasonic
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When AI can generate strategy decks, market analyses, and product roadmaps on demand, advantage shifts from those who find answers to those who know which answers matter. Strategic taste is the ability to discern signal from noise, quality from adequacy, breakthrough from incremental—even when all options look plausible on paper. How do you develop strategic taste? "It's pattern recognition earned through reps," says Partner Alberto Means. "You can't prompt your way to taste. It comes from making calls, living with consequences, and developing conviction about what great looks like. AI gives everyone the same menu. Strategic taste is knowing what to order." |
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Dispatches from the Collective delivers insights from SYPartner's work through human anecdotes, practical tips, and beautiful questions designed to help C-suite leaders navigate the unknown and act with purpose—shared in the spirit of helping all of us lead in a better way. Click here to sign-up and see all previous issues. |
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SYPartners is a consultancy that partners with clients at their critical turning points to design new possibilities for impact, create paths for long-term value, and build cultures of competitive advantage. Since 1994, we've helped some of the world's most iconic organizations lead into the unknown. |
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