Developed in partnership with Charter, Council Advisors’ new playbook, Getting Ahead of the Leadership Gap, examines why leadership pipelines have thinned and what organizations need to do now to rebuild them for the AI era.
The playbook draws on insights from a variety of leading HR executives, including those at IBM, Workday, ServiceNow, Box, GE and Airbnb, alongside research from Harvard Business School, Wharton, and MIT Sloan.
The starting point is the development debt organizations accrued after decades of disruption. This under-investment has left pipelines thin just as AI raises the demands on leaders. Paying down the debt means building on the enduring essentials of leadership development with three catalysts this moment requires:
- Human skills — judgment under uncertainty, trust at scale, and adaptability under pressure
- Cross-functional capability — influence without authority, and coordination across blurring c-suite lines
- AI fluency — built by senior leaders using the tools themselves
It also examines the expertise paradox AI is creating for the next generation of leaders, and ends with a diagnostic checklist and action guide for CHROs rebuilding their pipelines now.