Few roles are tested as constantly as the CEO. One leader put it to me this way: ‘In this role, you have to take some punches and keep going.’ It is a vivid reminder of what executives are up against and captures the reality of leadership today: multiple disruptions occurring at once.
Geopolitics. AI. Sustainability pressures. Generational shifts. Each would be daunting on its own. Together, they leave leaders bruised and battered and still expected to deliver clarity. This is not business as usual; this is the new normal, and there is no turning back.
The way through is optimism. Not blind faith in the unknown, but what I call realistic optimism: a disciplined mindset that faces today’s risks squarely while refusing to give up on tomorrow’s possibilities. It is this balance, realism about challenges, and conviction in progress that turns disruption from a threat into an opportunity.
For decades, efficiency and globalization shaped the playbook. Lean supply chains, scale, and cost optimization were the markers of success. That model depended on the assumption that markets would remain open, politics would be secondary, and disruptions would be temporary.
We know better now. Resilience, diversification, and trust are what determine who wins. The companies that thrive are the ones that deliver in turmoil, that can be counted on when others falter. Reliability has become the new currency of competitiveness, and nowhere is this more urgent than in Europe, where shocks collide with a persistent deficit of confidence.
That shift requires more than new processes. It requires conviction. Leaders must believe that investing in resilience today, even at higher cost, will secure tomorrow’s advantage. Without optimism, resilience looks like cost; with it, resilience becomes strategy.
“The right mindset reframes AI from a threat to an opportunity.”
Artificial intelligence promises to deliver efficiency: automation, productivity, and cost savings. Most leaders are still seeing business cases in back-office processes, where returns are clearest. But the real strategic question runs deeper: what remains distinctly human? As algorithms take over tasks, leadership shifts to judgment, empathy, and imagination.
It also raises questions of power and responsibility. A chatbot may summarize scenarios, but it cannot choose the right one. Predictive analytics may flag weak signals, but it cannot set direction. Even the scientists building these systems struggle to understand how they reach conclusions. Leaders must grasp that these are probabilistic tools, not deterministic ones.
The right mindset reframes AI from a threat to an opportunity. A pessimist sees replacement; an optimist sees augmentation. Used well, AI becomes an innovation partner: spotting weak signals, surfacing patterns, combining insights across domains. It already helps firms mine customer feedback, test options, and accelerate design cycles. The most forward-looking leaders lean in: not outsourcing judgment, but amplifying it.
And just as AI has moved from efficiency to strategy, geopolitics too has shifted from the margins to the center of the leadership agenda. Wars, tariffs, sanctions – these are not abstractions. They shape supply chains, cost structures, and customer relationships.
Until recently, many leaders believed disruption was temporary: Brexit an aberration, Trump an accident, the pandemic a one-off. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, conflict in the Middle East, and the return of President Trump to the White House underscore a deeper reality: turbulence is not a passing storm but the climate of business today.
Globalization was once the wind at companies’ backs. Now it is crosswinds and headwinds. Competitiveness is no longer about being cheapest or fastest. It is about being reliable. In a world of tariffs, reshoring, and security-first policies, redundancy is strategy: multiple suppliers, diversified markets, parallel operations, and the agility to shift across them. It is not the leanest system that wins, but the most resilient.
Executives today are no longer just operators; they are sense makers: interpreters of complex systems. Their responsibility goes far beyond delivering quarterly numbers. Their task is to help organizations understand what external shocks mean for them, and to give people a credible way through.
This is not about pretending to be an oracle. It is about leading a process of collective understanding, translating disruption into concrete implications, surfacing options, and charting a path forward. It means walking the factory floor to listen and learn what is really happening, not simply to be seen, and then connecting those realities to the larger forces reshaping the world.
Sense-making is not a side task; it is the work of leadership itself. Companies that do it well will build resilience. Those that fail will stumble in the fog.
In fractured times, silence may feel like the safe option.
In fractured times, silence may feel like the safe option. Yet employees, customers, and communities expect leaders to speak: to provide clarity on what matters and to take a stand, even when the ground beneath them is uneven.
That expectation is not fading. Business today is the most trusted institution, ahead of government, NGOs, and the media. With that trust comes demand: people want to know where their company stands because business is woven into their daily lives, not apart from them. Optimism gives leaders the courage to speak, not by denying risks, but by lifting up values that unify rather than divide. Fairness, sustainability, resilience: these can be affirmed without alienating whole communities.
Silence, by contrast, breeds mistrust. It creates a vacuum, and vacuums rarely stay empty for long. They are filled with louder, less constructive voices. Brands that hesitated were pushed onto the defensive; those that acted early and with clarity earned trust that endured long after the headlines moved on.
The real choice is not between risk and safety. It is between risk now and irrelevance later.
Leadership in flux demands four things: curiosity, optimism, imagination, and foresight.
Curiosity means refusing to stand still. Indra Nooyi set the tone when, as CEO of PepsiCo, she enrolled over a decade ago in an online course on artificial intelligence while running one of the world’s largest companies. The message to her team was unmistakable: if the CEO can make time to learn, everyone else can too. The best leaders today model that same behavior, asking harder questions, challenging comfortable assumptions, and signaling that complacency is not an option.
Optimism may be the scarcest resource in Europe. Leaders here must act as chief optimism officers, not because the risks aren’t real, but because without optimism, there is no energy for transformation, no trust in the future. Optimism in this sense is not naïve; it is strategic. It projects confidence that progress is possible, even in turbulent times.
Imagination and emotional intelligence complete the human side of leadership. Rational analysis matters, but it is rarely enough. The behavioral revolution in the social sciences has shown just how much emotion shapes decision-making. The most effective leaders combine reason with vision. They help people face uncertainty without fear and inspire belief by painting a vivid picture of a future worth striving for.
Finally, foresight. Leaders must learn to distinguish signal from noise, to surface weak signals and test scenarios. AI can support this work, scanning data for patterns or outliers, but foresight is not prophecy, and algorithms do not replace judgment. It is disciplined preparation: mapping alternative futures, tracking which scenario begins to materialize, and adjusting course with clarity.
The comparison should not be with calmer times, when efficiency was enough.
Europe’s challenge is not only technological or geopolitical. It is psychological. Too often, attention drifts toward what divides, and that mindset is corrosive.
Elsewhere, the mood is different. In the Gulf, in large parts of Asia, optimism fuels investment and risk-taking. Europe, by contrast, often projects gloom – and gloom becomes self-fulfilling. Leaders here risk falling behind not because they lack capability, but because they lack confidence.
The comparison should not be with calmer times, when efficiency was enough. The benchmark is today’s flux. That means investing in resilience even at the expense of efficiency, diversifying supply chains and markets even when it costs more, and building trust even when it draws criticism. The right question is not whether a company is leaner than it was in 2017, but whether it is more reliable than its competitors today.
This is where optimism becomes more than mindset; it becomes strategy. Projecting confidence is what unlocks investment, enables resilience, and creates the energy to compete. That is Europe’s test: not whether disruption exists, but how leaders choose to respond. And that brings us to the broader point: the real test of leadership itself.
This is why I believe the role of business has never been more important.
Leadership today is not about waiting for clarity. It is about acting amid uncertainty, signaling what matters, and turning disruption into direction. Realistic optimism is the essential mindset: clear-eyed realism about today paired with conviction in a better tomorrow.
Business has earned its position as the most trusted institution, ahead of government, NGOs, and the media, precisely because it solves problems. The Edelman Trust Barometer has shown this consistently. There is no shortage of problems to solve: from climate and energy to fractured supply chains and declining trust in institutions.
This is why I believe the role of business has never been more important. Leaders who mobilize people around purpose, who say, “this is why we exist, this is why we come to work,” generate both shareholder value and societal resilience.
The world does not need CEOs who wait. It needs leaders who act and whose optimism gives others the confidence to act too. That is the defining test of our time, and its greatest opportunity.
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