AI won’t make you relevant. Habits will. The real risk for leaders today isn’t disruption by AI, it’s drifting into irrelevance while the world races ahead. It doesn’t arrive with a bang. It creeps in quietly, disguised as “business as usual”, until entire careers, companies, or industries are suddenly out of step. And in a world where information now doubles every 12 hours, no one can rely on experience, youth, or tools alone to keep them relevant.
The edge no longer sits with one group either.
Graduates bring fresh eyes and fewer assumptions.
Experienced leaders bring judgement, networks, and systems thinking.
Operators bring speed and scale.
The advantage goes to those who can take what they already have and apply it through AI, curiosity, and new learning habits.
Why Irrelevance Happens
Blockbuster, Kodak, and taxi companies failed because leadership stood still. Executives underestimated the pace of change and avoided reinvention.
History shows the same pattern across every technological wave.
Internet shifted commerce and discovery online. Amazon, eBay, Expedia, and Trade Me reshaped demand and distribution almost overnight.
Cloud collapsed infrastructure advantages. AWS, Shopify, and Xero placed enterprise-grade capability in the hands of small players.
Mobile and Social rewired behaviour completely. Uber, Airbnb, and Instagram-native brands created categories that simply didn’t exist in the desktop era.
The laggards digitised the old way of doing things whereas the winners redesigned the model in its entirety. In almost every case, leadership determined the outcome.
Why Senior Leaders Have the Most to Lose
Irrelevance begins at the top. Senior leaders set tone, budgets, and direction, and when they hesitate, entire organisations stall with them. Kodak clung to film, Blockbuster clung to late fees... Both were inevitably left behind.
Experience can harden into rigidity. Habits that once delivered success turn into blind spots that limit fresh thinking. Leadership hesitation is often the first domino to fall, triggering decline that ripples across a whole organisation.
Yet the reverse is also true in that when leaders adapt, they unlock change at scale. They bring judgement earned over decades, networks of influence, and context that AI can amplify. Relevance, in this sense, is bigger than careers. It shapes whether organisations thrive or fade, which pulls people up or down with it.
The way forward is not abstract strategy. It is practice. Leaders who experiment, test, and apply AI hands-on sharpen their instincts and set the tone for their teams. Relevance comes from habits that build curiosity, encourage reflection, and turn experiments into meaningful impact.
Five Practices for Staying Relevant in the Age of AI
Focus deeply: Stop chasing every shiny tool. Pick one workflow you own (reporting, forecasting, customer engagement etc.) and embed AI until you can see and measure real results. Win small, learn what works, then expand.
Make space for reflection: AI produces output instantly, but insight only comes with pause. Build time each week to ask: What worked? What missed? Where is the pattern? Reflection transforms quick wins into longer-term learning loops.
Be a true student: Treat AI as a skill to master, not a shortcut. Block time weekly to practice. Refine prompts, test new features and tools, or link AI into automation tools like Relay.app, Autohive or Zapier. Curiosity compounds into capability when practice is consistent.
Use technology intentionally: Draw a clear line: AI does this, I do that. Let AI handle the admin (notes, drafts, data pulls) and use your time for decisions, coaching, and strategy. Tools extend capacity, but accountability stays with leaders.
Prioritise connections over contacts: AI can prepare you for meetings, draft outreach, and scale communications. But relationships are still built by people. Use the time AI saves to deepen trust, mentor others, and create opportunities. Efficiency scales with tools. Influence scales with humans.
Where Leaders Build Relevance
Relevance is built in practice, not theory. Leaders who test AI directly against the workflows and decisions that matter most gain confidence quickly, and take their organisations with them.
This is the approach behind the Master of Technological Futures at academyEX. Every project links back to live work: streamlining reports, running scenarios, reshaping decisions. Leaders classify workflows as automation or augmentation, run short value tests, and apply tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or NotebookLM in context.
Confidence grows through safe experimentation with no coding required. Values guide decisions about what to scale and how to govern responsibly. And because learning happens in cohorts, discoveries spread across industries, building a collective intelligence that helps leaders move faster together than they ever could alone.
Irrelevance is sneaky, but not inevitable. Leaders who focus, reflect, learn, use AI intentionally, and prioritise human connection will extend their influence and keep their organisations in step with change.
This article was co-created in partnership with academyEX, sponsor of The AI Corner newsletter and podcast.
Written by Mike ✌
Passionate about all things AI, emerging tech and start-ups, Mike is the Founder of The AI Corner.
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