Executive Perspective
Attie van der Linde's perspective on AI, the future of work, productivity and leadership — written for the executives building and running payments and financial services. Opinion, clearly labelled as such, and distinct from our research.
AI is changing which parts of work create value. But many organisations still reward the visible output that AI can now produce in minutes. The harder change is not adopting AI. It is changing the scorecard.
AI can improve individual output while reducing diversity across a group. If that mechanism reaches strategy, competitors converge on the same answers, and in African payments they may converge on a template built for somebody else's market.
AI is remarkably good, until it isn't, and it fails in the same fluent, confident voice it uses when it is right. The leadership skill that matters is calibration: knowing which answers deserve verification.
An executive briefing on the first half of the series. The first twelve weeks were not really about artificial intelligence. They were about how AI changes what creates competitive advantage.
If everyone can build faster and access similar AI capabilities, why would anyone choose you? The answer is the evidence you have already left behind, because AI makes it easier than ever to check.
If AI makes businesses dramatically more productive, who keeps the value? Historically, innovators captured about 2.2% of the returns their innovation created. The rest went to customers. Productivity is not the same as profit.
AI lowers the barrier to entry and raises the bar to win. Founders reach customers faster with less funding, but the evidence shows more launches, not more enduring businesses, and a widening gap at the top.
For decades, knowledge created advantage. AI is commoditising access to it. When competent output is easy to produce, the moat moves to alignment, prioritisation and consistent delivery.
When the cost of producing information collapses, effort stops telling you who is actually thinking. On routine work AI raises the floor; on complex work it makes judgement, and its absence, far more visible.
We spend a lot of time asking what AI will do to workers, and not enough asking what it will do to leadership. When AI raises the floor on basic output, the leaders who only added value by correcting the basics become exposed.
AI can help junior employees draft, summarise and prepare faster. But organisations must be careful not to confuse faster output with deeper learning. The real challenge is using AI to accelerate judgement, not bypass it.
AI has not made great work less valuable. It has made average work easier to spot. As basic output becomes faster to produce, the premium moves to judgement, context, originality and decision quality.
Prompting matters, but it is not the real AI skill gap. The strongest AI users are better filters. They know what to trust, challenge, verify, refine and reject.
AI is not making people lazy. It is removing many of the old excuses for not starting. The first draft, summary, structure and meeting prep are now easier to produce. The real divide is between people who use AI to move and people who use it to create noise.
AI is often described as the new search engine. But the evidence suggests something more interesting. People are not simply replacing Google. They are replacing small workplace favours, first drafts, explainers and moments of informal support.
AI is not only helping people work faster. It is changing what people believe they can attempt, ship and finish. The real question is whether AI is increasing productivity, or unlocking ambition.
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