Lenny RachitskyHost of Lenny's Podcast | Author of Lenny's Newsletter

How to lead in the AI era

21 Sept 2025 · 1 min

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In this brief talk, the speaker highlights the accelerating pace of change driven by AI and the resulting uncertainty and fear that many organizations feel about the technology’s trajectory over the next few years. To navigate this volatile environment, the speaker proposes a willow‑tree metaphor: a willow is both sturdy enough to survive storms and flexible enough to bend without breaking. Effective management today, therefore, must embody this dual quality—maintaining core stability while remaining adaptable to rapid shifts. The speaker acknowledges the difficulty of achieving this balance but urges leaders to internalise the willow’s qualities as a guiding mindset for leading through the AI era.

Chapters

The rate of change is accelerating. There's just a great deal more uncertainty that people have about things like, where is AI going to be in two years from now? I think there's quite a lot of fear that many organizations are feeling. So I think about this metaphor a lot of, like, the willow tree. The willow tree is a very sturdy tree. It can survive a lot of storms, disasters, et cetera, but it's also very flexible. So I think today management is really about this idea of, like, be sturdy while being flexible. And that is a very hard thing to pull off. But I think just imagine the willow tree and, like, try and channel that kind of feeling of what it is that we're trying to do together.