The Pressure on Leaders: Information, Speed, Span and Accountability

All courses / AI Leader / Module 1 / Chapter 3

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

• Classify claims about pressure on leaders as measured, surveyed or argued, and state how far each carries.
• Explain the reporting clocks in NIS 2 Article 23(4) and Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/301 as a requirement to name the classifier in advance.
• Review an adoption figure for what it counts and how old its evidence is.
• Draft a load map for one leader post and one week without using data about named staff.

Key concepts

Three grades of evidence

Measured rests on a study with stated sample and method, official statistics, an instrument's text or a primary report. Surveyed is self-reported answers from a stated group, often run by a party with an interest. Argued is reasoning from mechanism with no measurement behind the specific claim.

The dashboard problem

An adoption figure answers a question easier than the one the board asked. Hansa Mutual's dashboard counted logins and showed 74 per cent, while a sample of 1,200 users found 38 per cent weekly use of any feature; Nordvik's 61 per cent counted any session over one minute.

Evidence age

The time since a claim was last checked against its source. Nordvik Region's adoption dashboard was last checked against the logs in February 2029, so at the start of the year the book follows its evidence age was seven months.

Moral crumple zone

Elish's concept of a human who absorbs the blame for the failure of an automated system over which the person had little control. The chapter uses it as an argument about design: a leader named as answerer who cannot reconstruct reasons or change the outcome is in that position.

Load map

A record for one post and one week of what reaches the leader, what the leader decides and in which decisions AI took part. It is kept by the leader about the leader's own work, without assistant query logs or data about named staff, and employee representatives are informed beforehand.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Teaching plan

Discussion

1. The chapter argues that a machine summary moves reading from the leader to whoever must check it. Where in your organisation has reading moved, and does the person it moved to know?
2. The developers in the trial by Becker and colleagues believed they had been sped up by 20 per cent when completion time had increased by 19 per cent. What does that imply for how a leader should treat reports of time saved?
3. Which of the six pressures does your organisation try to answer with AI, and what second problem does that answer create?

Written exercise

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

1. Under Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/301, Article 5, when is the initial notification of a major ICT-related incident due for a financial entity?

   1. Within 24 hours of classification and no later than 72 hours from awareness
   2. Within 72 hours of the incident and no later than one month from awareness
   3. Within four hours of classification as major and no later than 24 hours from awareness
   4. Within one hour of awareness and no later than four hours from classification
   Show the answer

   C. Within four hours of classification as major and no later than 24 hours from awareness
   The chapter gives four hours from classification as major and no later than 24 hours from awareness, and draws the implication that the person who classifies must be reachable early and named before the incident.

2. Why does the chapter say the Eurostat figure of 20.0 per cent AI use in 2025 says nothing directly about Hansa Mutual or Nordvik Region?

   1. Its population excludes financial and insurance activities and public administration
   2. It was collected by a vendor that sells the tools whose use it reports, in a survey of 31 countries
   3. It counts logins and not weekly use of any feature
   4. It covers only enterprises with fewer than ten employees
   Show the answer

   A. Its population excludes financial and insurance activities and public administration
   The survey covers the non-financial business economy with at least ten employees. It shows the rate of change a board reads in the press, a rise of 6.5 percentage points in a year, but not the position of an insurer or a regional authority.

3. Which claim does the chapter's evidence ladder mark as not measured for leaders and label as speculation?

   1. That CEO spans widened in large US firms from 1986 to 1998
   2. That neural summarisers add content the source does not support
   3. That management-body duties attach to named bodies and people
   4. That AI frees leaders' time, a claim with no verified source
   Show the answer

   D. That AI frees leaders' time, a claim with no verified source
   No verified study measures what generative AI does to the productivity of leadership work, so the claim that AI frees leaders' time has no source in the table and carries the label speculation.