AI is moving faster than most organizations can comfortably absorb. The technology is advancing, investment is increasing and expectations are rising. Yet for many senior leaders, the challenge is no longer understanding what AI can do. It is deciding what to do with it: where to place the bets, what will genuinely create value, and how to lead an organization through a transformation whose destination is still taking shape.
We hear this tension constantly in our work with senior leaders. They don’t need to become AI experts, but they do need enough strategic skillset to challenge the thinking around them, judge the quality of a business case and make informed investment decisions. At the same time, they need the leadership mindset to make difficult calls with incomplete information, bring people with them and navigate the very real questions AI raises about roles, capabilities and the future of work.
The problem with much of today’s AI development is that these two dimensions are still treated separately. Technology programs build knowledge and capability; leadership programs focus on people, behavior and change. Yet senior leaders don’t get to choose between the two. Capturing the opportunity of AI requires skillset and mindset, working together.
It was this premise that led us at The Preston Associates to partner with Baringa, a leading technology and AI consultancy, to create REWIRED: Leading in the Age of AI. Together, our faculty bring deep expertise in AI strategy and implementation, business transformation and senior leadership, designing the experience around a simple idea: capturing the opportunity of AI requires skillset and mindset, working together.
For Pratyush Lal, Partner and North America Digital & AI Lead at Baringa, the skillset challenge starts with moving from possibility to value.
“The conversation has moved beyond ‘What can AI do?’ The harder question is where it can create meaningful value for your business. Leaders need enough fluency to distinguish genuine opportunity from novelty, and the judgement to place a few meaningful bets rather than chase everything.”
But identifying the opportunity is only half the equation. Elana Schrank, Baringa Partner specializing in Operations, People and Change, sees the ability of an organization to absorb change as fundamental to delivering the value.
“You can have a brilliant AI strategy and still fail to realize its potential. People need to understand what is changing, what it means for them and how they need to work differently. The people dimension isn’t something you address after the AI strategy; it is part of the strategy.”
This is where skillset and mindset become difficult to separate. AI can provide more information, generate scenarios and accelerate analysis, but it doesn’t remove the need for human judgement. As TPA Executive Coach Graham Heddle puts it,
“The danger is confusing a better answer with a better decision. Leadership is still about understanding context, weighing consequences and making choices when the evidence is incomplete. AI makes those capabilities more important, not less.”
REWIRED therefore works with both dimensions throughout the two days: getting hands-on with AI, exploring where ROI is proving real and pressure-testing business cases, while simultaneously examining what the technology demands from leaders. Four leadership enablers — Moral Courage, Orchestration, Curiosity and Humanity — provide a practical lens for exploring those demands.
The design itself reflects that philosophy. Cohorts are intentionally limited to 20 senior leaders from different industries. Barton Warner, TPA Executive Coach, explains:
“We wanted a room where leaders could talk candidly about the decisions they are actually facing. The cross-industry mix is intentional: it takes people outside the assumptions of their own sector and creates the opportunity to learn from peers wrestling with similar leadership questions in very different contexts.”
The two-day format is equally deliberate. TPA Executive Coach Carrie Chappell sees the concentrated experience as critical:
“This isn’t something you absorb through a series of webinars between meetings. Leaders need space to experiment, challenge their thinking, learn from each other and connect the technology back to the reality of their role. Two concentrated days allow us to move beyond awareness and into application.”
Ultimately, the goal isn’t to create leaders who can simply talk more intelligently about AI. Luciana Nuñez, TPA Partner and co-author of Coaching Power, sees a more fundamental shift:
“For years, we’ve argued that the leader’s job is moving from having the answers to asking better questions. AI makes that shift unavoidable. As technology becomes increasingly capable of providing answers, the premium on leaders will be their ability to exercise judgement, create clarity, unlock the thinking of others and understand where human leadership adds the most value.”
AI will continue to evolve, and today’s tools will quickly give way to tomorrow’s. The more enduring opportunity is to develop leaders who can connect what the technology makes possible with the mindset required to turn that possibility into meaningful value.
REWIRED: Leading in the Age of AI is a two-day executive bootcamp from Baringa and The Preston Associates. Applications are now open for the Fall 2026 REWIRED cohorts in New York and London. Learn more and apply here.
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