Growth Leadership in the Age of AI — Working Notes, Not a Manifesto
You hear “AI” these days and half the room perks up while the other half sinks in their chair. For leaders chasing growth, it’s either painted as the golden lever or the incoming wrecking ball. The truth, if we’re honest, sits somewhere in the middle — muddier, less glamorous, but way more useful.
What I’ve noticed is how quiet the first signs creep in. A sales pipeline that suddenly looks thinner because the prospect is testing an AI-powered competitor. A product team that slips a prototype into ChatGPT to draft copy and then doesn’t want to go back. A client who starts asking pointed questions: “Why can’t you do this faster if the machines can?”
It doesn’t arrive like a thunderclap. It arrives like a steady drip. And then suddenly, it’s everywhere.
The old growth levers — expand the team, add headcount, buy the new tool, push harder — don’t work the same way anymore. The temptation is to fight the last war: add more hands just as automation starts replacing hands. Or worse, freeze, waiting for some grand AI playbook to show up.
Neither works. The growth leaders worth watching? They move differently. Not cleaner. Not neater. Just… more adaptive.
A few things I’ve seen up close
One founder I know runs a small design firm. She didn’t announce an “AI strategy.” She just started asking her team, “Where are you wasting the most time?” They listed it. She tested a couple tools on those chores. Two stuck, three flopped. Growth didn’t explode, but suddenly they had hours back each week. That bought the space to chase two new clients.
A director at a manufacturing company leaned the other way — he was scared of job loss rumors. Instead of ignoring it, he brought the team into the open: “AI will hit us, so let’s figure out where it helps, not hurts.” They piloted predictive maintenance software. The machines didn’t stop breaking, but downtime fell. Margins grew. And the team trusted him more for not ducking the conversation.
And in a nonprofit, oddly enough, the leader used AI for grant drafts. Not to replace staff, but to beat the blank-page dread. They rewrote everything anyway, but the pace doubled. More proposals out the door meant more chances at funding.
What seems to help (and it isn’t shiny)
- Start small. Look for where hours leak out. Automate those first. Don’t buy the giant solution until you know what problem you’re actually solving.
- Talk openly. Silence makes people invent stories. Half of those stories are scarier than reality.
- Keep human judgment at the center. If growth is just efficiency, you’ll plateau fast. It’s the human insight — the new angle, the risk others avoid — that actually fuels growth.
- Revisit assumptions often. The pace here is brutal. What worked in January might feel antique by October.
None of this makes a TED Talk. But it makes a balance sheet look better.
What’s striking is how much of growth leadership right now isn’t about AI itself. It’s about people watching how you deal with it. Pretend it’s irrelevant? You look out of touch. Pretend it’s a silver bullet? You look naïve. Bring it into the open, test, adjust, admit where it works and where it flops — suddenly the team knows how to move with you.
And it is exhausting, by the way. Because the “right” answer today could shift tomorrow. You’re steering with one hand and scanning the horizon with the other. Don’t kid yourself that you can do that indefinitely without breaks. Build in small breathers, or you’ll be the one who collapses just when steadiness matters most.
When this era gets looked back on, nobody’s going to say, “That leader chose the perfect AI vendor in 2024.” They’re going to remember whether the team felt informed, whether you kept pushing forward without selling them fairy tales, and whether you managed to grow without breaking trust.
Growth leadership in the age of AI isn’t about getting it “right.” It’s about not standing still. And about making sure, when the tools shift under your feet again — because they will — the team still believes you know how to move.
