NZ Leadership teams without Gen-Z leaders will be left behind in the age of AI

Here is the uncomfortable truth. We cannot clearly imagine what AI cannot do yet, and that frontier is far from defined. Which means we also cannot see with certainty where humans will still create value. That is a massive strategic blind spot, best navigated by leaders with fewer legacy assumptions about how work, industries, and markets should operate.

Experience is not the enemy. Wisdom from those with 10 to 40 years is essential. But leaders with fresh views carry far less baggage into that future. They are not anchored to old assumptions about jobs, processes, and hierarchies. They see possibilities as they are, not as adaptations of the past.

Fast tracking younger leaders is not about reckless shortcuts. Done well, it is deliberate acceleration, pairing AI natives with seasoned operators so they can make high value calls quickly while avoiding avoidable risk.

New Zealand is already behind in the AI race. Putting our youngest, most AI native talent into decision making roles now is one of the few ways we can claw back lost ground.Three reasons why waiting is a mistake

Young, hungry, AI-native talent should be in senior roles now, not after “paying their dues” for a decade. Many will argue these people belong in operations or middle management first to “learn the ropes” before stepping into the C-suite. I do not believe that is enough.

1. Influence without authority is a bottleneck. Some will argue you do not need AI natives at the very top if you have strong AI fluency across the organisation and trust in empowered operational leaders. But without final authority, that fluency gets trapped in presentations and side projects. Strategic calls are still made by leaders whose default frame is pre-AI business logic, so adoption lags and opportunities are missed. We have seen this movie before:

2. Advantage compounds fast and late adopters never catch up. In marketing, Raffi Salama describes how advantage compounds quickly for brands that move at the speed of culture. They win big early, and those gains stack over time. Think...

These examples may not resonate with every New Zealand consumer, but the thinking behind them drives success overseas, and local equivalents do exist.

The same principle holds: these moments are not born in quarterly meetings or old school thinking. They happen when someone with the instincts, authority, and systems acts before the moment passes. An AI advantage works exactly the same way. Being six months late to the dance will become a permanent gap rather than a catch up problem.

3. You can teach tools, but not instincts. Others will say you can teach AI thinking to seasoned leaders. But AI native thinking is a lived habit of spotting opportunities in emerging tech, iterating in real time, and being comfortable with incomplete information. It is the same instinct that let early YouTubers, app developers, and crypto builders seize whole categories while incumbents “studied the trend". That comes from years of immersion in fast moving digital environments, not from a weekend workshop.

And as you age, your default risk appetite for new tech tends to shrink. I see it in myself. A couple of years ago, flipping NFTs felt like a calculated bet; today, dipping into a new crypto project feels reckless. If that shift happens to me and others my age, imagine what it is like for executives who have never moved at that speed.

My big bet: If not in New Zealand, then certainly in the USA and UK, we will see a wave of companies that promote early from within, putting AI natives into strategic roles years ahead of the traditional schedule.

These pre-AI era companies will skyrocket, not because they have more resources, but because they have decision makers who live and think in the new reality.

The influence, pace, and mental model required to navigate the AI era make a strong case for AI native decision making power at the very top. AI is not an operational side project. It is a strategic lever that will reshape business models, customer experiences, and competitive positions in months, not years, even if the seeds sown in the near term aren't evident at first. If AI natives are not in the room where the highest stakes calls are made, businesses will miss the narrow windows that define winners and losers.

And to be clear, “AI native” is about mindset and capability, not just age. It is a lived comfort with emerging technologies, constant iteration, and integrating AI into real work.

Older, seasoned knowledge workers bring critical value. They have navigated market shocks, change cycles, and hype curves before. They know the customer history, brand equity, and operational realities. They can spot the fishhooks in tech adoption and lead complex change management.

But here is the uncomfortable truth. On their own, many leaders underestimate the pace of technological change, adopting new tools only after they have gone mainstream when the real advantage is already gone. This is why, as Stephen Morison from Fonterra warns, starting with an “AI strategy” can quickly become “a powerful solution looking for problems.” Too often, leaders treat AI as a separate initiative bolted onto pre AI business models rather than recognising it for what it really is: business strategy in the age of AI. When you approach it as a bolt on, you lock yourself into adapting the past instead of reimagining how the business competes and operates in a fundamentally different environment.

That is why AI native leaders are not a “nice to have” but essential. They start with the business model, embed AI into the strategic core from day one, and move fast enough to capture the narrow windows where AI advantage compounds before competitors catch up.

The best leadership teams in the AI era will be multi generational by design but intentionally weighted to include AI natives at the decision making level, and I mean younger than most of you are picturing. Not early 40s or late 30s with some digital experience. I am talking mid to late 20s. The ones who have lived their adult lives largely in an AI shaped world. You need their energy, speed, and instinct combined with the wisdom, networks, and judgement of seasoned operators.

Because in this era, the real risk is in moving too slow while the market disappears under your feet. Paul Pritchard coins in perfectly: "the change can happen to us, or we can lead the change". I think those that win in the game of business will adopt this same line of thinking, operating differently today to avoid erosion in the coming years.

For New Zealand, the stakes are even higher. We are already running behind in the AI race, and fast tracking our youngest, most AI native talent into real decision making roles could be the way we claw back lost ground.

If you sit on a New Zealand board today, your number one job is to get AI natives into the room where the most strategic calls are made before the next competitor in Sydney or Singapore beats you to it. We cannot afford to wait for them to grow into traditional leadership moulds, because by the time we think they are ready, the advantage will belong to Australia, the US, or Asia.

This is not a long, gentle race. It is a series of sprints, and our regional competitors are already off the blocks. While Kiwi companies keep their AI natives buried in middle management, others are handing them the wheel. In five years, they will be the ones building the products and owning the markets that should have been ours.