Leading in turbulent times: six things boards are battling with right now
From AI costs to supply chain security: two AltoPartners partners unpack the six biggest challenges facing boards today – and the leaders who can step up to the plate.
When Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says we are in a period of unprecedented change, it’s time to sit up and pay attention.
Gates is talking specifically about the era of artificial intelligence. In an essay titled The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical, Gates writes: “In terms of equity, AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice. The challenge is monumental. Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history.”
It’s not just the now-widespread business adoption of generative and agentic AI that is causing turbulence: there’s the Russia/Ukraine war, the extreme heat in the northern hemisphere, a looming super El Niño, an impasse in the Middle East that threatens world peace, and geopolitical unpredictability upending supply chain management. And this is before you factor in the day-to-day complexities of running an organisation.
We asked Scott Eversman and Diego Sánchez de León, two of AltoPartners’ seasoned executive search and leadership professionals, for their insights on existing and looming challenges and how they go about finding leaders who are both willing and able to take them on.
Challenge one: Everyone needs to be a geostrategist now
Eversman, Partner at The Inzito Partnership / AltoPartners UK, says that, in his experience, boards don’t pay enough attention to world events and trends. “At the beginning of Trump 2.0, I thought people in business leadership in Europe were not ready for what was about to happen at the geopolitical level. We’ve lived in a stasis for decades… but the world is being inverted in terms of the relationships we’ve assumed for the last 30 years.”
Michael Montelongo, former Acting Secretary of the United States Air Force and Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School, says business concerns – supply chains, energy grids, cybersecurity – are also national issues. Speaking in April 2026 at the Corporate Director Forum’s Directors Summit, he said: “Geopolitical risk and geostrategic matters are here to stay.”
Eversman, who is building an AI-driven predictive governance platform for Inzito’s board resilience advisory, says it’s essential to be a student of geopolitics. “An event can pass you by nine times, but on the 10th it may hit you in the middle of the forehead. And that can bring your company to an end.”
Challenge two: Transitioning from “lean” thinking to supply chain security
The COVID pandemic exposed a weakness in conventional business thinking. “Companies love ‘just in time’ procurement,” Eversman says. “Supply chains were like finely tuned Swiss watches, moving product so that the minute you needed it, it was there, but not before – reducing the cost of warehousing. The pandemic proved that this can be a real vulnerability. I think we’re changing our minds a little bit in terms of ‘lean businesses’.”
Challenge three: Top talent where it’s needed most
Diego Sánchez de León, Partner at Leaderland / AltoPartners Spain, says one of the challenges facing big companies is getting the right people to the right locations. “In conversations with my clients, people mobility comes up a lot. A real problem is having the right financial people to control projects across different countries and locations. One client has a big project in Louisiana, but no one wants to go there; they want London or New York. Getting the right person in the right place can require a thorough review of your organisational structure and of your remuneration, rewards, and retention policies.
“It also makes a big difference to have a local executive search partner that can find you the same person in territory. The beauty of our alliance model is that our partners on the ground have deep local knowledge and if anyone is going to find the right person in Louisiana or Luanda, they will.”
Challenge four: Managing the tension between local autonomy and global control
Having local impact while maintaining global control is a related problem. Sánchez de León: “You need to give your local leadership team autonomy and some level of independence, but at the same time you must have a level of control over what’s happening.”
He cites a client in Europe who is responsible for operating a subway line in a South American city. “They need strong local people with local knowledge and local relationships in order to develop the country, which creates this tension between the need to provide more autonomy and to maintain control. We spend a lot of time advising clients on how to do this without compromising process or autonomy.”
In uncertain times, this can be especially challenging. Leaders who thrive in uncertain conditions are those comfortable empowering others, which also means allowing them to make mistakes and learn from them. In times of peak uncertainty, this can require strong nerves. As tensions rise, so does the tendency to default to command-and-control, which erodes the conditions required for a business to thrive rather than merely survive.
Challenge five: Organisational simplification
Sánchez de León says many of his clients are looking for ways to improve the speed and agility of decision-making. “They’re asking why they need three or four managerial levels and then three, four or even five director levels.” The trick for boards will be to simplify the layers while maintaining governance controls and preventing burnout by loading leaders with additional responsibilities.
Challenge six: The cost of AI adoption vs the returns
Gates points out that we have no experience with a technology that can be adopted as quickly and as widely as generative and agentic AI. It took 20 years for the PC to significantly change how we worked: software development, pricing, learning to use the tools, and incorporating them into business practices took time. “AI, on the other hand, runs on the devices we already have, and it uses natural language.”
In that fluid landscape, businesses face a raft of issues, including spending on training and adoption without any real returns – just yet, at any rate. Decisions around replacing staff with AI agents may not align with internal realities or customer expectations, while removing a layer of junior staff may compromise the talent pipeline.
What should boards be doing?
Make sure the right people are in the conversation. Eversman: “If you look at a traditional board, you have some retired CEOs and CFOs, maybe one current CEO or current CFO. But when it comes to generative AI or cybersecurity, the traditional board member feels out of their depth. They’ve read about it in the Financial Times, but they don’t really know how it works under the hood. Step number one is making sure you’re hearing the right voices around the table. If a voice is sitting two layers below the board in the company, in the brain of a 37-year-old PhD, then that person needs to be heard.”
In addition to finding the right voices, geopolitical risk must be on the agenda. Montelongo recommends a four-step operating model:
● Understand: Elevate geopolitical risk and geostrategic matters as a core governance issue by making it a standing agenda item.
● Plan: Map the business’s true dependencies: supply chains, technology, talent, and energy are examples.
● Prepare: Build the board’s geostrategic muscle. Possible tools include scenario planning, rapid-response playbooks or board education.
● Act: Cultivate and build relationships with public officials and trusted advisers. The corporate affairs role has arguably never been so important.
What do the best people look like?
In a word: they’re pluralists, combining technical fluency with ethical grounding and emotional intelligence. These are the key attributes clients are looking for in leaders right now. In particular, says Sánchez de León, businesses cannot isolate tech as a support function. It’s going to be indistinguishable from everything else. Leaders will have to be more than merely tech-literate.”
Additionally, the demand for emotional intelligence means that many people currently in leadership positions may no longer be suitable. “They are good at detail, they are good at getting things done – they are very good managers. But they are missing a rearview mirror, one that takes into account the team that they need to motivate.”
As part of that rearview mirror, Eversman says the secret to successful leadership in turbulent times sits in the convergence of curiosity and commitment. “Your vision drives you forward, but this should be combined with open-mindedness. Everybody comes with biases and some of those biases are there to protect us. But you need to be able to override your biases so that you can seize opportunity, at the same time as acting for the benefit of the greatest number of shareholders, stakeholders and employees.”
And then there’s resilience. Says Eversman: “You’re going to get beaten down every day. You’re going to run into walls. You’re going to stub your toe. So I think resilience has got to be in the mix.”
Ernst & Young in the United States is investing US$100 million in an incentive programme to reward precisely these qualities. “How we reward our people defines what we value as a firm. And what we value are confident professionals who continuously push themselves to learn fast and drive a lasting impact,” says Ginnie Carlier, EY Americas Chief Talent and Culture Officer. “With these awards, we are empowering our EY professionals to bring a curious mindset to their work [and] to challenge what is possible.”
Where executive search comes in
Eversman says psychometric tests are only one part of the equation in finding the right talent. A growth mindset and an ability to work collaboratively are key skills. “In executive search, the key question is to find out what candidates are doing to refresh their skills, to educate themselves, to stay current. Are they relying on their own skills to do that, or are they quick to reach out and ask others?”
He says candidates should also be screened for a proven track record in inclusion: hard, concrete evidence of building diverse teams that can deliver solutions intentionally and quickly. “You can have a very diverse room of people, but if they share a ‘group think’, if they all went to Ivy League institutions, then that does not bring in truly diverse perspectives.”
When it comes to changing the composition of a board, perhaps by bringing in a “non-traditional” member, it’s important to work with a search consultant who is a trusted advisor so that the changes are transformational rather than merely transactional.
Finally, says Sánchez de León, the worst thing a board can do is to do nothing. “Problems at this level do not resolve themselves. Action is required. And it may not be perfect. But so long as you can say, ‘based on this information at this point in time, this decision was sound’, then you are on the right track. Experiment. Work with the information you have and the resources at your disposal. This signals that you are providing opportunities and you are open to change.”
Written by Renee Moodie
Further reading
The AI leadership conundrum: Why lay-offs miss the mark
Leading in Uncertain Times: The Human Qualities Defining 2026’s Most Effective CEOs
Ask Alto: What is “stagility” and why do leaders need to know?
