Prudence and integrity: A competitive advantage in an AI era

Organisations that thrive in the AI era won’t simply be those that optimise AI for efficiency, but those led by people of integrity who are honest with their teams and make prudent, people-centred decisions, writes Ronan O’Farrell, CEO of the Timoney Leadership Institute.

It is difficult to spend an hour in Ireland without hearing the words ‘Artificial Intelligence’ at the moment, and it’s no wonder. Earlier this year, a Trinity College Dublin and Microsoft study revealed that Ireland is one of the world’s leading economies when it comes to AI adoption, with 92% of organisations using or planning to use the technology.

I work closely with business owners and leaders across the island of Ireland, and I am seeing the impact this is having. On the one hand, AI is generating fear, because it empowers non-specialists to perform complex tasks previously reserved for experts. Some of that fear is justifiable, but it also reflects the innate fear of change most of us are susceptible to.

On the other hand, it is generating plenty of optimism, and leaders are rightly using it to find improved ways of working, with up to 40% higher productivity growth being reported.

I regularly hear leaders asking questions about how AI can be used to improve the mechanics of their business. How can I streamline processes? Where can we automate to cut costs? How do we keep our competitive edge

Ask fundamental questions

The focus of these questions is execution, and they need to be asked. But leaders also need to ask more fundamental questions, ones that require integrity and sound judgement to answer. What values guide our decisions? What culture are we creating? How are we developing our employees to adapt and enhance their work through AI? These are the questions that in time have a significant impact on business performance.

They are also, in my view, the areas we have neglected in recent years, and the stats back it up. The 2022 LIFT Leadership Index found that when Irish people were asked what our leaders most needed to work on, honesty and integrity ranked comfortably at number one. Four years on, with far more powerful tools in our hands, I would not expect a different answer. Meanwhile, Gallup’s latest workplace report found that just 9% of employees in Ireland are engaged at work, compared with a global average of 20%.

It’s my conviction that these two statistics are not unrelated, and that organisations that thrive in the AI era won’t simply be those that optimise AI for efficiency, but those led by people of integrity who are honest with their teams and make prudent, people-centred decisions. AI casts a spotlight on leadership integrity, and its value is higher than ever.

However, making good decisions has arguably never been more difficult. AI is fuelling a pace of change that is hard to keep up with. Leaders are scared of their companies being left behind, and investors are frantically backing anything that promises to optimise it. As a result, leaders feel compelled to decide rapidly, without drawing in wider perspectives or ensuring they are in a calm and considered state of mind. An observation Pope Leo made in his recent encyclical struck me: in a period of genuine acceleration, the deliberate act of pausing is not the brake on good leadership but the mechanism of it.

At Timoney Leadership Institute we aim to provide that space for leaders to step back. As our strategy professor, Chris Bingham, succinctly puts it, we focus not just on learning what to do, but on becoming: becoming a better leader, and helping others within the company to become better leaders. At a time when it is almost impossible to keep up with the pace of development with multiple AI models dropping every week, this has never mattered more.

Leadership in action

Rather than running faster, most of us in leadership need to step off the pitch for a while and take a look at the game unfolding before us. I once had the good fortune to observe Brian Cody, the former Kilkenny senior hurling manager, run a team coaching demonstration. What struck me was how little he did. He shared a couple of observations from the sideline, a few simple instructions, a blow of the whistle, and the tempo of the whole thing changed. He was not working harder than the lads in front of him, but he could see more than they could.

That is most of what we try to do at Timoney: get leaders off the pitch long enough to see the game, not to relax but to look, and to make the tough decisions. We may realise that our business model needs to change, or that we haven’t been consistent with our team, saying one thing about their importance and value while acting differently, hopefully unintentionally.

Ultimately, the development of AI is not slowing down. By January 2027 the models will have moved on further than most of us can imagine. The question I ask myself, and other leaders who want to keep learning, is this: will my judgement have improved by the time the technology has? Will I be more prudent and just in my decisions? Will I have a better awareness of my biases and limitations by then?

Amongst all the decisions business leaders are under pressure to make, I would suggest that the best course of action is to give yourself the time to step back, to strive for integrity, and to make better informed, prudent and people-centred decisions.