Great Minds Series: Leading in the Unknowable

For the last three years, we have been showing our clients the art of the possible when it comes to using AI for productivity and efficiency. We are starting to understand what this means for employment and future skills, the opportunities and the threats, but where will the real change land?

Our guest speaker, Dr Julian Stodd, has explored the idea that AI impacts across two dimensions. Firstly, efficiency and optimisation within our existing systems and secondly, the reinvention of the system itself.

Julian will draw on his current research of 120 complex organisations in his ‘Sketches of the Future Organisation’ and refer to his latest book, ‘Unreconciled: Being Human in the 21st Century’ to help us explore how organisations hold value and how structures we have grown to depend on are shifting, putting the knowable itself in question.

This session will leave you with a sharper set of questions about the organisation you are building, the future skills you will need to consider and how we lead in the unknowable.

About our guest speaker

Dr Julian Stodd has spent over fourteen years researching how organisations work at the intersection of formal and social systems, exploring leadership, learning, culture, and change through rigorous, evidence-based inquiry.

He founded Sea Salt Learning, a global consultancy through which this research has shaped policy and practice in organisations including Apple, Google, Novartis, and The Red Cross, and within various militaries and government entities. He sits as a Special Advisor to the World Health Organisation and is faculty on the University of Pennsylvania’s Doctoral CLO Programme, as well as Visiting Research Fellow at Middlesex University.

His work over the last two years has focussed on the social context of AI. ‘Engines of Engagement’ (with Dr Sae Schatz and Geoff Stead, now on MIT’s bookclub list) and ‘Unreconciled: Being Human in the 21st Century’ (with Dr Sae Schatz) set out what AI means for leadership, culture, and what it means to be human in increasingly fragmented, digital systems.

In 2026 he is working across over a hundred organisations on a new project titled ‘Sketches of the Future Organisation: human, AI, and the space between’, which explores how organisational structure, value, and decision authority need to shift if organisations are to become more adaptable and dynamic.