Growth in the Age of AI: 3 Dilemmas leaders must solve
Explore three leadership dilemmas shaping growth in the age of AI and how leaders can turn AI potential into growth and measurable business impact.
Explore three leadership dilemmas shaping growth in the age of AI and how leaders can turn AI potential into growth and measurable business impact.
Over the past months, hardly a client conversation has passed without touching on AI. Executives are exploring new use cases, experimenting with AI assistants and agents, and asking how AI can improve productivity, unlock growth, and reshape future business models.
Yet the deeper question is not whether AI will create opportunities. It is whether organizations can absorb the speed and ambiguity of this shift while continuing to perform.
Traditionally, growth could be managed through a relatively linear journey: set direction, build capabilities, and scale execution. AI does not remove this logic. It compresses the timeline and raises the stakes. Growth is becoming harder to manage: the pace is faster, the potential paths to growth are more diverse, and culture and ways of working have become part of the growth equation. This makes focus critical: leaders need to decide where AI can create the greatest value and direct resources accordingly.
At a-connect, we see this both in our client work and in our own transformation journey. This year’s annual a-connect retreat brought together colleagues, board members, alumni, and external experts around one central question:
How do organizations grow in a world being reshaped by AI?
Across these discussions, one insight stood out: AI may be the catalyst, but the real challenge is organizational. Growth in the age of AI depends less on access to technology and more on a company’s ability to make clear choices about priorities and resource allocation, mobilize people, and adapt how it competes, serves customers, and creates value.
While every organization’s transformation journey is different, three recurring dilemmas continue to surface. They are not entirely new. AI is simply making them more visible, more urgent, and harder to ignore.
Many organizations have developed AI strategies, established governance principles, and launched pilots, yet struggle to move from strategy to execution and from pilots to scale.
Too often, AI remains an initiative rather than a new way of working. Teams have access to tools, but workflows remain unchanged. People experiment individually, but the organization does not yet learn systematically. Adoption metrics may look encouraging, while the operating model behind them stays largely the same.
The leadership question is therefore: How do we move from AI awareness to AI adoption?
Real commitment requires leaders to make clear choices about where AI can strengthen competitive advantage, unlock growth, or improve speed and efficiency, and back those choices with the resources and leadership attention needed to scale adoption beyond pilots.
AI creates value when applied to the priorities that matter most for the business, its customers, and its future relevance.
One of the most common leadership tensions we observe is this dual imperative to protect and grow today’s business while adapting to how AI will reshape value creation.
The tension is real: Resources are limited. Leadership attention is limited. Every investment in the future competes with a pressure to deliver in the present. And because AI is evolving so quickly, waiting until the picture is clear is rarely a viable option.
The leadership question is therefore: How do we win the future while continuing to run today’s business?
Organizations that manage this balance well connect today’s performance with tomorrow’s opportunities. They use AI to strengthen the core business where it creates immediate value, while deliberately building the capabilities, partnerships, and operating models required for future growth.
Perhaps the most personal challenge of all is identity. Many professionals have built their careers around expertise that AI can increasingly augment: research, analysis, reporting, documentation, and turning information into insight.
Realizing that what made them successful in the past may no longer be enough in the future can create fear and quiet resistance to changing how they work and learn. It challenges how they see themselves and the value they bring.
The leadership question is therefore: How do we create a culture where reinvention is encouraged rather than feared?
Leaders need to lead by example, help people understand how AI can augment their expertise and change the value they create, and create the confidence and space to experiment, reflect, and adapt. This takes time and sustained leadership attention; there is no shortcut.
The conversation around AI often starts with technology. Winners start with the business. They use AI to rethink strategy, capabilities, execution, and culture, and hold it accountable to measurable business outcomes.
Successful leaders in the age of AI lead by example. Winning leader focus AI on where it can drive growth, productivity, or relevance, direct resources accordingly, and adapt the business around these priorities. They measure both adoption and tangible bottom-line impact to protect today’s performance while building the capabilities and confidence required for the future.
Winning leader set a clear direction and remain flexible in how they get there. They combine AI-enabled productivity with human judgment and create conditions for learning and continuous reinvention.
Growth in the age of AI requires organizations to grow and transform at the same time. The leadership challenge is to make this dual agenda actionable while keeping it tied to business performance.
At a-connect, we have spent more than 20 years helping organizations turn strategy into measurable results, moving from PowerPoint to bottom line.
In the age of AI, that mission remains the same. What has changed is the speed, ambiguity, and complexity leaders need to navigate. We help clients identify where AI can drive growth, sustain relevance, and create measurable impact, and build the agility required to keep adapting as the landscape evolves.
Our model is built for this kind of change. Because our consultants work across industries, functions, and transformation challenges, they bring broad exposure to what is emerging, what is working, and where organizations often get stuck. This external perspective is especially valuable in a fast-moving field like AI, where leaders need both strategic clarity and practical insight from the front line of change.
This article draws inspiration from Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today’s Business While Creating the Future by Scott D. Anthony, Clark G. Gilbert, Mark W. Johnson published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2017.
Thomas Hagmann is a Client Service Partner and member of our Leadership Team at a-connect, advising CEOs, leadership teams, boards, and owners on growth, innovation, and turning ambition into results across Food & Consumer, Ingredients and Industrial sector.
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Thomas Hagmann
Client Service Partner Zurich
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