While executive search firms race to adopt AI for efficiency gains, Russell Reynolds Associates is taking a radically different approach: building what their new Chief Science Officer calls a "synthetic brain," a proprietary OpenAI-powered system that ingests proprietary data and insights to fundamentally transform how leadership potential is identified and predicted. Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is an international authority in people analytics, and the Chief Science Officer at Russell Reynolds Associates, a founding member of the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants (AESC). From Individual Expertise to Collective Intelligence Where advantage in the profession once came from who you knew, what matters now is what your organization knows. Dr. Chamorro-Premuzic is trying to solve this paradox: brilliant individual consultants whose collective knowledge is inaccessible and untapped. “What I’m trying to do is transfer individual knowledge into a collective brain that makes the firm smart as a system,” he explains. "Individually, people are very smart and experienced and have a lot of expertise, but collectively, it doesn't necessarily systematize or transfer." The competitive landscape has fundamentally shifted. A decade ago, a consultant might win an engagement by personally knowing every viable CFO candidate in a region. Today, clients can ask ChatGPT [...]

John Amaechi OBE, organizational psychologist, author, and founder of APS Intelligence, is a keynote speaker at AESC’s Global Summit on Leadership in London, November 17–18. His challenge to today’s leaders and leadership advisors is both profound and practical: if anxiety and fear are holding the modern workplace back, only human leadership, truth, and trust can set it free. The Data Distraction In the age of analytics, organizations have become intoxicated by the illusion of certainty that data provides. Metrics of every kind promise precision and objectivity. Yet, as Amaechi reminds us, data informs, but only humans can conclude. “Data and analysis are for insights, not for conclusions. Human beings are for conclusions.” He cautions that the field’s focus on “valid” measures too often mistakes replication for truth. “Creating something that is considered valid is easy; proving that it's valid requires decades, and most of the metrics that I look at are a picture of leadership of the past. If you're still saying extroversion is important in leadership, the 1980s called and they want their data back.” For Amaechi, the problem isn’t data itself, it’s deference. Executive search professionals and leadership advisors, he suggests, must be interpreters, not statisticians, helping clients [...]