An analysis of leadership practice describes a pattern in which reliance on artificial intelligence for computation and pattern-recognition tasks is accompanied by a decline in leaders’ embodied cognition, intuition and situation-sensitive judgment. The author identifies four levels of collective action, from pattern-executing to pattern-originating, and argues that most organisational investment and attention now concentrates on the lower, automation-driven levels, leaving little support for reflective or generative capacities associated with senior judgement and originality. The account draws on work with leaders across business, government and international institutions, describing overwhelm and diminished discretion as recurring conditions among senior figures. Otto Scharmer set out the analysis in MIT Sloan Management Review on 7 July 2026, calling for parallel investment in what he terms deep-sensing leadership infrastructure alongside artificial intelligence systems.
Source: MIT Sloan Management Review, 2026-07-07.