Smart Leadership in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

titled “Smart Leadership Canvas: How to Lead the AI ​​Revolution with Your Heart and Brain“. The journalist co-signs Filippo Poletti and the economist Alberto Ferraris for Guerini Next, the book brings together the quantitative analyzes carried out by Alessandro Zolo, CEO of Great Place to Work Italia and 20 interviews with leaders belonging to the boomer generation, Scalapay the unicorn, co-founded by Simone Mancini, born in 1987. The result is a ten list of company leaders in the age of AI, technology which, according to many analysts, will be instrumental in determining 50% of management decisions in the next 5 years. This is why to lead businesses it is necessary to focus on intelligent leadership and the combination of “heart and brain”: the former to take care of people, the latter to achieve business goals by promoting a positive impact on society.

The portrait of the leader in the age of Artificial Intelligence

“Today’s leader should know design the transformation process in their place, to develop within the company new skillspromote a organizational culture which makes better use of Artificial Intelligence and mainly determines which activities will be performed by humans and which by machines, attributing to intelligence co-pilot role and to the people as ‘pilots’ of the ongoing revolution,” explains Poletti.

In addition to being the leading voice on LinkedIn, the author has several publications to his credit that cover wide-ranging topics with the clarity of a reporter.

I met him on the sidelines of the presentation of the volume, which took place on December 1, 2023 in Milan, at the headquarters of Microsoft in Italy, together withCEO of Microsoft Italy, Vincenzo Esposito.

In the book, the figure of a multifaceted leader emerges, who must have skills and abilities commensurate with the evolution of technology. How different is this profile from those that came before it?

“He must be an increasingly ‘heart’ leader as well as ‘brain’: the heart must be used to empower people, the brain to identify and achieve business goals with maximum attention to positive impact on society. We are living in an extraordinary historical phase: the use of Artificial Intelligence will lead, for the same number of working hours, to greater productivity in Italy, estimated at over 310 billion euros, almost the GDP of Lombardy, one fifth of that of Italy. For this reason, the leader must be even more people-oriented than in the past: in his hands there are and will be tools that, if used consciously and for good, will be able to help him and his partners work better. Technological innovation will allow professionals to have more time to devote to activities with high added value, allowing them, for example, to reduce the so-called “digital debt”, which today sees them, if we talk about office work, receiving up to 250 emails per day and almost 150 conversations in Teams. The leader “coach” must, therefore, have a “big heart” to be next to his colleagues.

Technology companies are widely represented in the volume. But is leadership in the age of artificial intelligence the prerogative of those on the boards of these companies, or does it need to change in any financial sector?

“The ‘AI-cene’ or ‘AI-cene’, as I call it, is the era in which Artificial Intelligence collaborates with human intelligence. We have officially entered Industry 5.0. We are talking about great strides in many areas, from fintech to the telecommunications sector, from insurance technology to healthcare. Not to mention the whole secondary sector: it is no coincidence that the book opens with an interview Luca Barilla, vice president of major Italian food company.

It is from the use of Artificial Intelligence that, to give a specific example in the health sector, the innovation in the diagnostic technique of MRI for the diagnosis and monitoring of rare neuromuscular diseases comes: in a few seconds, up to 10 at the most, it is now possible to obtain accurate information about the properties of pathological tissues. Experimental use of neural networks for magnetic resonance imaging was the topic research project developed at the IRCSS Mondino Foundation in Pavia from Leonardo Barzaghi and from Raffaella Fiamma Cabini, PhD students of the “BioData Science” group. It was they, already physics graduates in Pavia and Milan, who presented it as a world premiere at the “CompMat Spring Workshop”, the event dedicated to the new frontiers of machine learning and computational mathematics, organized last May at the University of Pavia. ».

What, if any, are the differentiators enabled by Artificial Intelligence?

“The first element was the speed of adoption of Genetic Artificial Intelligence. Never before in human history has a technology expanded so rapidly. I am referring to ChatGPT which, launched on November 30, 2022, registered 5 million users in 5 days and 100 subscribers in 3 months. It took 16 years to get 100 million mobile users, 7 for the internet, 4.5 for Facebook. This is an extraordinary “critical mass,” to use the terminology of economists who study the positive effects that occur when the utility of a service depends on the number of people using it. A second element of differentiation is the fact that the more neural networks are trained, the more they learn, improving the service offered: we have entered, in fact, the “AI-cene” or “AI-cene”, that of interaction. I’m never talking about automation, much more about replacing people, but rather collaboration».

The book offers a decalogue and 20 shades of smart leadership. Where did this “bullet point” method come from, which you have used in other publications, such as Grammar of the New World?

“At the beginning of the Decalogue is the self-assessment test of leaders. The book attempts to take a step forward in understanding the “IA-scene” or “AI-scene” by identifying a self-evaluation “canvas” or grid. The business model canvas was born in 2010 thanks to Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur. The “intelligent leadership canvas” assesses whether human leadership, with the cooperation of Artificial Intelligence, has heart and mind. I am, in fact, in favor of cooperation between humans and neural networks, where the main actor is the leader who, using neural networks, can be even more attentive to the people and the goals to be achieved. Regarding my path in literary production, I am convinced that the understanding of reality passes through the identification of “first words” or “non-decomposed”. In “AI-scene” or “AI-scene” the 3 “first words” are “cooperation” between human and artificial intelligence, “heart” and “brain”.

By what criteria was the Decalogue drawn up?

“A lot is being said and written about Artificial Intelligence today. The “Smart Leadership Canvas” reaches a modeling and says no to the tactical vision of human-machine collaboration, while saying yes to the medium and long-term strategic one. If we look at it in detail, the “heart-brain test” or “canvas” contains the basis of the “AI leadership platforms”, that is, the platforms that will be developed to help leaders lead companies.

If you had to narrow the list of young leaders down to at least 3 key characteristics, which would you list?

“He knows how to recognize it urgency level of humans-Artificial Intelligence Collaborationknows how to favor it well-being of partners and, finally, he knows how to realize it corporate goals in compliance with rules and professional ethics. All in a very short time: today’s leader must have “readiness”.

Regarding the 20 shades of leadership, can you give us some examples?

“Meeting so many leaders was amazing and I’m sure reading these testimonials will surprise readers. There is, for example, the “prosperity leadership” described by Vicenzo Esposito, CEO of Microsoft Italy, as well as the “courageous leadership” that Melissa Ferretti PerettiCEO of Google Italy, “inclusive leadership” described by Agostino Santonivice president of Cisco Southern Europe and vice president of Confindustria with responsibility for digital, “agile leadership” indicated by Floriano MasoeroCEO of Siemens Italia, “useful leadership” he suggested Corrado PasseraCEO of illimity and “the shared leadership” he thinks Christina Zucchetti of the Zucchetti Group”.

You have addressed the issues of pandemic, war and now Artificial Intelligence in your books. What will be your next focus?

“I will continue to look for the story, especially reflecting on the path I have taken on LinkedIn, where since May 5, 2017 I have been reporting, daily, non-stop, on the change in the world of work. I am officially a professional journalist and one of LinkedIn’s official “top voices”. I like to say that every morning I hunt for positive or purposeful stories. People’s stories, indeed. It is no coincidence that in the “Intelligent Leadership Canvas” readers will never find “Artificial Intelligence” written in capital letters. At the center of business activity should be, in my opinion, the person with a name and surname, written, yes, in capital letters. And all my books are dedicated to people, to professionals: I write to eliminate distances, to learn and make what I have encountered and learned available to other people. Life, even literary life, is an amazing encounter.”