Leadership used to be about knowing more than the people around you. AI flipped that equation overnight. Suddenly the person at the top isn’t always the most informed — just the most exposed.

This is creating a quiet tension inside modern organizations: the leaders who understand business don’t understand AI, and the ones who understand AI don’t always understand business.

Somewhere in between sits the future CEO — but we’re still trying to figure out who that is.

Coder-CEO vs. strategist-CEO

On one side is the coder-CEO.

They see the world as systems, dependencies, and architectures. They can spot technical shortcuts disguised as efficiency. They can challenge assumptions buried inside the model.

But they often struggle with translation. They see the system, not the story — the code, not the culture. They can diagnose perfectly and still fail to mobilize an organization around a shared direction.

On the other side is the strategist-CEO.

They understand markets, incentives, and the human machinery of a company. They can turn a direction into a movement. But many treat AI as another technology project rather than a structural shift. They underestimate how technical debt is often cultural debt in disguise. They know how the business runs — but not how the algorithms reshape the running.

Both archetypes are incomplete

Both archetypes are incomplete. Not because they lack intelligence, but because AI demands a new kind of leadership muscle: the ability to bridge what you know with what you don’t.

AI doesn’t require leaders to be experts. It requires them to be learners. The real test is no longer mastery — it’s adaptability, humility, and the willingness to make decisions in a landscape where no one has the full map.

The stakes for organizations are high.

A coder-CEO may build brilliant systems that the organization isn’t culturally ready to absorb. A strategist-CEO may craft a compelling AI vision that collapses under the weight of its own technical naivety. In either case, the company stalls — not because the leader is wrong, but because the organization is misaligned.

The future CEO?

The CEOs who thrive in the AI age may be the ones fluent in translation: between human judgment and machine output, between experimentation and accountability, between today’s stability and tomorrow’s uncertainty. 

They don’t need to write code or architect models. But they do need to understand how AI reshapes work, talent, and decision-making.

And they need the courage to build leadership teams strong enough to compensate for what they personally lack.

My take is that the future doesn’t belong to the leaders who know the most about AI or the most about business. It belongs to the ones who can bridge the two — and build organizations capable of learning faster than the world around them.

Or?

Joachim Cronquist is a strategic AI advisor and founder of Cronquist AI. He helps business leaders turn AI into business clarity and measurable results.