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Reader,

AI has hit our current and future workforce with a proverbial 2x4.

Is a college degree necessary and sufficient for helping our future leaders build a meaningful career? What about additional “executive education?”

The disruption facing leadership education is often described too simply. We hear explanations such as:

• “AI will change teaching.”
• “Degrees are losing value.”
• “Executive education needs to go digital.”

Each of these statements is partially true but incomplete.

What leaders in universities and executive education are facing is not a problem to solve. It is a mess to formulate and resolve.

Formulating the Mess

“Formulating the mess” is a systems thinking concept developed decades ago by the late Russ Ackoff, one of the leading theorists of organizational design and interactive planning.

The central idea is deceptively simple but profoundly counterintuitive: most organizations fail not because they cannot solve problems, but because they solve the wrong problems.

Formulating the mess is Ackoff’s disciplined approach to understanding a problematic situation as a whole system before attempting to fix any of its individual parts. A mess is not a single problem to be solved; it is a set of problems that interact with and reinforce one another.

I think this is a great description of the wicked, AI-enabled world of work our workforces are operating in and which “education” must address to help out future leaders.

Formulating the mess requires stepping back, resisting premature solutions, and building a shared understanding of how the current situation came to be, how it functions, and why it persists. This mess is a system of interacting parts where improving one part often worsens another. That is precisely the condition that both higher and executive education now inhabit.

Consider the forces at play in this mess.

AI is not just a tool.

AI is no longer merely assisting instruction. It is functioning as a tutor, coach, explainer, practice partner, and, in some cases, evaluator. This fundamentally challenges the assumption that learning requires institutional mediation.

Credential Inflation and Signal Erosion

General MBAs and non-differentiated executive certificates are losing signaling power. Employers increasingly ask, “What can this person actually do?” rather than “Where did they study?”

Executive Education’s Time Paradox

Future leaders need learning that is faster, more contextual, and immediately applicable. Yet executive education remains anchored to cohort schedules, faculty calendars, and content refresh cycles that move far slower than the environments our organizations operate in.

Alternative Credential Ecosystems

Platforms offering micro-credentials, stackable certificates, and skills-based badges are encroaching on territory once dominated by universities and elite executive programs.

Cost Structures That Assume Scarcity

Universities and executive education units are still built around scarcity models:

• Scarce faculty time
• Scarce seats
• Scarce access

AI radically undermines scarcity while institutional cost structures remain fixed.

Individually, each of these is manageable. Together, they form a mess.

Linear Fixes Fail

Many institutions have responded predictably. They add AI tools to existing programs or launch a few online certificates. Or maybe they simply rebrand existing programs around “digital” or “AI leadership.”

These actions often increase internal strain without restoring relevance.

Naming the Mess

The core tension is not delivery of content. It’s providing learner value that’s migrating. Knowing “stuff” is not enough. AI has and knows all the stuff.

Consider executive education. Historically, its value proposition combined prestige signaling (“I got my MBA from XYZ!”), curated frameworks (“Let’s discuss Business Model Generation.”), or faculty insight (“Well. Porter told me …”).

AI now competes directly with frameworks and insight. Prestige matters, but less when skills decay quickly. Meanwhile, our young leaders increasingly want decision support, not just conceptual understanding.

Institutions like Harvard University and Arizona State University are experimenting aggressively. But even they face structural limits. The issue is not willingness to change. It is systemic coupling (and tension) between revenue models, faculty incentives, accreditation norms, and learner expectations.

Improving any one element in isolation does not resolve the tension. It often sharpens it.

Formulating this Mess

The real mess might be stated this way:

Higher education and executive education are simultaneously being asked to move faster, cost less, personalize more, signal credibility, and adapt continuously. But they must do so while operating inside structures designed for stability, scarcity, and slow change.

That is not a technology problem. It is not a pedagogy problem. It is not a marketing problem. It is a systems problem.

The institutions that remain relevant will not be those that “add AI” or “go digital.” They will be those that rethink what learning is for, what their credentials signal, and how the value of learning is migrating as business environments continue to morph.

Formulating the mess does not give leaders answers. But it does give them a better understanding of the real problem.

The problem, as I see it, is that we need people who can use all the stuff that AI knows. And that starts with the ability to think constructively about our future.

The Prepared Mind Project

At its core, The Project is about strengthening the thinking capabilities leaders need to navigate uncertainty without being taken by surprise. We intend to work with all leaders across organizations.

That said, we are starting with HR leaders for a very intentional reason. They are often asked to carry the human side of transformation first. They’re translating change, supporting people through uncertainty, and helping organizations move forward, often without much space to pause or reflect.

We have a lot in the works. But our initial webinar will run on January 28^th and will address the challenge of “don’t be taken by surprise.” Details to follow soon.

Bill