Re:Invention Starts Now: A Call to Legacy Leaders from the Front Lines of the AI Era
“Here’s my message to leaders across legacy media and beyond: Stop romanticizing your history. Start architecting your future.”
I recently had the pleasure of joining Kathi Sharpe-Ross on her acclaimed podcast The Power of Reinvention, and I invite you to tune in to our full conversation here. Kathi is a visionary whose work - spanning media, storytelling, and now reinvention - has long been focused on what matters most: the human experience. Her thoughtful, grounded, and passionate leadership consistently reminds us that transformation isn't just possible, it's imperative.
Our conversation wasn’t a retrospective. It was a line in the sand.
After decades of chronicling and advising media and advertising leaders, I’m done looking backward. The past, however instructive, is no longer our reference point. The AI era has arrived not with a whisper but with a roar, and for legacy businesses still clinging to cost-efficiency models and Wall Street appeasement, the window for reinvention is closing fast.
We are at the light bulb moment of artificial intelligence. Just as Edison couldn’t have imagined a future of electric cars and microwave ovens, we have yet to comprehend the exponential capabilities of AI. But what we do know is this: machine intelligence will govern systems, processes, and infrastructure. What remains for human leadership is not control over the machine -- but mastery over the uniquely human.
This is the message at the heart of my latest book, The Tao of Leadership: Harmonizing Technological Innovation and Human Creativity in the AI Era. In it, I argue that we must shift leadership from efficiency-driven, siloed, technocratic control to one that centers empathy, intuition, ingenuity, and imagination - what I call the four pillars of human creativity. It’s not a soft pivot. It’s a survival strategy.
Kathi and I dove deep into this theme. She challenged me, as only a longtime friend and sharp observer can, to reckon with the realities of decline in legacy media -- and more importantly, to illuminate the path forward. She gets it. And if you’re in a leadership role, you need to get it, too.
Because the painful truth is that too many legacy organizations are not just managing decline, they are institutionalizing it. They’ve become case studies in short-termism. The moment they might have embraced the internet, cable, streaming, or AI as growth engines, they deferred. Today’s boards and executives must stop saying “we’ll let the next leadership team deal with it.” There is no next team. There is only now.
The reinvention we need isn’t about disruption for disruption’s sake. It’s about reclaiming creativity as a growth asset and dismantling outdated operating models built for a world that no longer exists. It’s about leaders realizing that technology will soon dictate where and how they invest. Their only meaningful differentiator will be how human-centered they are in responding to that reality.
In our conversation, I made this point: if you’re in a job today that does not empower you to use AI - leave. If you’re leading a company and haven’t made AI integration and human development your top priority - step aside. This is not a time for incrementalism. It’s a time for courageous reinvention.
Kathi is a guide in that journey, and I’m grateful to have shared this dialogue with her. She embodies what I call “leadership with heart” - visionary, kind, and relentlessly curious. As she said, there is a way to lead with empathy. And I’d add, there’s no other way worth leading.
So, here’s my message to leaders across legacy media and beyond: Stop romanticizing your history. Start architecting your future. The machines will handle the calculations. Humans must now lead with courage.
Let’s begin. Not tomorrow. Today.
Listen to the full episode of The Power of Reinvention with Kathi Sharpe-Ross and Jack Myers here.
Jack Myers
With over five decades of experience in corporate leadership, B2B research, management insights, and technological trends, Jack Myers is a visionary leader and a trusted source for guidance and preparation as generative AI and machine intelligence dominates …
