I wrote recently about how mid and late-career developers, engineering directors, and vice presidents of engineering need to rebuild around AI. This is the version for executive leaders. Because leading a company through AI transformation is an order of magnitude harder than transforming engineering organizations, and the competition for board seats in twenty twenty-eight will be brutal.
You have worked twenty, twenty-five, maybe thirty years to get here. You are good at running organizations. You have earned your position. Look. I am writing this because what I am seeing across the industry needs to be said directly.
The path that made you a successful executive will not make you someone boards want. The executives who understand this in twenty twenty-five will have board seats and top-tier opportunities in twenty twenty-eight. The ones who do not will be explaining in interviews why their companies fell behind while their peers built sustainable competitive advantages.
The reality right now is clear. Organizations have rolled out AI coding agents and are watching which companies drive transformational competitive advantage and which fall behind. Most organizations are going all-in on AI. The ones that are not will be case studies in failure to adapt.
If you are at a pure software company, like a Software as a Service provider, a platform, or a developer tools company, you have twelve to eighteen months before the market starts separating winners from losers.
If software supports a physical product or service, such as manufacturing, healthcare, or logistics, you have three to five years. But the gap between companies transforming now and companies waiting is widening every quarter.
Now. Here is the market truth nobody is saying. Right now, boards cannot hire executives with three years of AI transformation experience at scale because those executives barely exist yet. In twenty twenty-eight, they will exist.
When that board is looking for their next Chief Technology Officer, Chief Executive Officer, or board member, are you the executive with the proven transformation track record, or the person being passed over for someone who has it?
This is not about job security. This is about being positioned for board seats, advisory roles, or your next executive opportunity in twenty twenty-eight. It is about having a legacy that opens doors instead of raising questions about why you did not see this coming.
Look. This is hard for chief executive officers and other top leaders. Vice presidents need to prove they can transform engineering organizations. You need to prove you can transform entire companies. Those are not the same skill set.
Vice presidents navigate organizational politics across hundreds of people and build governance at scale. You need to reshape entire companies, manage boards through transformation, navigate regulatory concerns, explain business model implications to investors, and build sustainable competitive advantages that show up in market position.
You need to understand the technology deeply enough to make strategic decisions and navigate the complexity of getting boards, investors, regulators, and thousands of employees aligned.
Right. The executives who succeed will not be the ones who hired consultants and rolled out AI tools. They will be the ones who led companies through transformation and can prove it with competitive advantages that show up in the market.
Now, let us look at what your twenty twenty-eight legacy needs. In twenty twenty-eight, when you are being recruited for board positions or your next executive role, they will ask how your organization adapted to AI. What was your strategy? What business outcomes did you achieve?
Your competition will talk about leading companies through fundamental transformation. They will talk about avoiding hundreds of new hires because teams built AI systems to handle that work. They will cite reducing the cost of goods sold by fifty percent across the organization, increasing flow by sixty percent, and improving time to market by forty-five percent. They will describe restructuring entire companies for AI-enabled work. They will explain governance frameworks that satisfy board-level scrutiny and regulatory requirements. They will show competitive advantages in cost structure and speed that win deals they could not compete for before.
Will you have those stories? Or will you say we adopted tools and hired consultants?
There are five capabilities you need to build. First, you must build deep strategic understanding. You need to understand the business model implications. What does it mean when work that used to take three months takes three weeks? How does that change your competitive position? Your cost structure? Your talent strategy?
You cannot answer these questions from executive summaries. You need enough understanding of how AI agents work, how teams build systems with them, and how to orchestrate them to make informed strategic decisions.
This is not about writing code. It is about understanding the technology well enough to drive strategy, evaluate what your organization tells you, and explain it to boards and stakeholders credibly. The discomfort you feel getting technical again is the skill building. That is how you know it is working.
Second, you have to reshape the entire organization. Transform the entire company. Do not just flatten. Rethink career paths, compensation models, hiring profiles, and organizational design from first principles.
Figure out what senior engineer means when a twenty-five year old who is great with agents outproduces a twenty year veteran who is not. Navigate the board conversation about why your engineering headcount is not growing even though output is.
Build competitive advantage through organizational design. The organizations you will lead past twenty twenty-eight will not look like they do today. They will be flatter, faster, and more leveraged. Different capabilities will be valued. Figure out what that looks like at scale and make it real.
Third, you must build enterprise governance at scale. Build governance that works across thousands of people and satisfies board-level scrutiny. Navigate regulatory concerns. Establish the risk framework for AI agents throughout the software development life cycle and in production systems.
Build the compliance story. Create the governance model for agent orchestration and AI systems in the development cycle that becomes industry best practice. Other companies will study what you built.
Do not delegate this. Own it at the executive level because the board needs to understand and approve the risk framework. The executives who can demonstrate they navigated this complexity successfully, who can show they built governance that satisfied boards and regulators, those are the executives who get board seats.
Fourth, master board and stakeholder management. Manage board concerns about AI risk and opportunity. Explain to investors why your cost structure is changing. Navigate competitive pressure without creating panic.
Build the narrative that makes the transformation make sense to non-technical stakeholders. Be the person who can walk into any room, whether it is the board, customers, regulators, or investors, and explain what you are doing and why it is responsible.
Manage expectations while driving urgency. Build confidence while acknowledging risk. This is executive leadership at the highest level.
Fifth, build capability development into the organizational DNA. Build systems that develop capability in thousands of people. Change hiring profiles. Rethink onboarding. Make building AI systems and orchestrating agents core competencies across your entire organization.
Create the talent pipeline that sustains your competitive advantage. Build capability development systems that make transformation sustainable, not dependent on a few key people. Measure this as a strategic capability, not a training program. Have metrics showing that capability development drives competitive advantage.
Now, we must consider the timeline reality. You have three years to build this transformation legacy.
Executives who started a year ago already have compelling stories. They can talk about leading companies through transformation. They can show business outcomes. They can say we reduced cost of goods sold by fifty percent across the organization and increased flow by sixty percent. We are winning deals on speed and price that we could not compete for before.
Executives who start today will have solid track records by late twenty twenty-six. They will have transformed entire companies. They will understand what governance satisfies boards and regulators from real implementation. They will have relationships with boards and stakeholders built over time.
Executives who wait another year will be competing in twenty twenty-eight against candidates with three years of demonstrated success leading companies through transformation, building sustainable competitive advantages, navigating complex stakeholder landscapes, and creating transformational business outcomes.
So, let us look at what success looks like. By twenty twenty-eight, you should be able to walk into any board room and tell stories like these.
I led a company through complete transformation. We avoided needing to hire hundreds of additional people because our teams built AI systems to handle that work. Cost of goods sold dropped fifty percent across the organization. Flow increased sixty percent. Time to market improved forty-five percent. These outcomes created sustainable competitive advantage. We are winning deals on speed and price that we could not compete for two years ago.
I restructured the entire organization for AI-enabled work. We went from traditional hierarchies to flatter structures that empower people. Our engagement scores increased while productivity increased. I learned what organizational shape works at scale when AI agents change economics, and I built it.
I built enterprise governance that works across thousands of people and satisfies board-level scrutiny. Legal is comfortable. Security is comfortable. Regulators understand our framework. The board approved our risk model. I navigated all of these stakeholders successfully while enabling speed.
I managed the board through this transformation. I explained the business model implications. I navigated concerns about risk. I built confidence while maintaining urgency. The board understands what we are doing and why, and they are supportive because I brought them along throughout.
I built capability development into our organizational DNA. We hire for AI capability. We develop it systematically. We measure it as a competitive advantage. Our talent pipeline sustains our advantage. This is not dependent on consultants or a few key people.
These are the stories that get you board seats. These are the capabilities that position you for top-tier opportunities. This is what makes you the executive that other companies want to recruit or learn from.
Your legacy starts today. The market in twenty twenty-eight will have executives with proven transformation track records at scale. These will be executives who can walk into board rooms with complete stories about leading companies through AI transformation, building sustainable competitive advantages, navigating complex stakeholder landscapes, and creating transformational business outcomes.
Those executives will get the opportunities. They will get the board seats, the advisory roles, and the top-tier executive positions at the companies you actually want to work for.
You can be one of those people. But you need to start building that track record today, while you can learn through doing at your current company, so you have it when you are competing for opportunities against executives who already spent three years building theirs.
You can do this. The capabilities are learnable. The path is clear enough if you start walking it.
Start today. Where you are three years from now, what opportunities you have, what boards want you, and what your legacy looks like, all depends on what you do in the next three years.