Partner or perish: the board and C-suite must embrace AI – fast

The Business Times, Partner or perish: the board and C-suite must embrace AI – fast

By Mr Danny Koh (Managing Director, South-east Asia, Spencer Stuart) and Professor Phoon Kok Kwang (SUTD President)

Leaders must design intentional human-artificial intelligence partnerships instead of deploying the technology as a cost-cutting tool

For decades, corporate leaders treated enterprise technology as a delegable matter.

Enterprise resource planning systems, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity – these were important, but not existential. Boards asked for implementation road maps. Management recruited external consultants for support.

This age-old practice is no longer feasible. In an artificial intelligence (AI)-accelerated economy, sitting on the sidelines isn’t wise restraint, but a lapse in leadership judgment.

AI is advancing at a pace that defies traditional adoption curves. Systems are drafting legal briefs, acing elite mathematics competitions and designing original products. Agentic systems increasingly act with autonomy.

Whether artificial general intelligence arrives in five years or 15 is almost beside the point. Competitive advantage is already shifting.

Yet, most boardrooms still engage AI indirectly. Directors read summaries generated by teams who themselves rely on tools they only partially understand.

Many executives’ exposure to AI begins and ends with basic prompts in public tools – producing outputs that are generic or shallow, and occasionally misleading.

AI’s value: amplification, not automation
Properly harnessed, AI expands executive bandwidth. It synthesises complex data sets, runs scenario simulations at scale, stress-tests assumptions and models volatility in real time.

It performs cognitive heavy lifting – freeing human leaders to focus on judgment. And judgment remains irreducibly human.

Boards and C-suites must still define which problems matter. They must frame strategy within ethical boundaries, assess reputational risk, weigh trade-offs, and mobilise organisations towards transformation.

No algorithm carries moral accountability. Neither can a chatbot galvanise a team in the way an inspirational leader can.

The companies that will outperform are not those that deploy AI as a cost-cutting tool, but those that design intentional human-AI partnerships.

This requires treating AI not as a rival to replace humans, but as an amplifier that expands human judgment, creativity and strategic capacity. At the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), this aligns with our Design·AI approach.

Organisations that master human-AI partnership will unlock new forms of productivity and innovation. Those that treat AI purely as an efficiency-enhancing instrument will fall behind.

Consider the example of a major fuel retailer that sought to transform its contact centre from a cost centre into a growth engine. An early attempt to replace agents with chatbots and voicebots failed; customers found the interactions impersonal, and latency disrupted conversational flow. Dissatisfaction rose.

It was a key learning: Adopting AI merely as a tool rather than a partner may not produce the best solution.

The chief executive officer redesigned the system around partnership. Design skills helped him assess when not to use AI, and when to retain human agency.

AI handled routine queries and flagged sentiment shifts, generating real-time prompts suggesting cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Human agents delivered those insights with empathy, clarity and context.

As a result, customer satisfaction soared, revenue rose and call volumes grew. Crucially, more human agents were hired, not fewer. AI did not replace the workforce. It amplified it.

Evidence of this amplification effect is growing. Research from SUTD found that a structured AI enablement programme delivered across 10 enterprises and involving more than 200 non-tech, mid-career professionals demonstrated statistically significant gains in both productivity and creative capability.

Productivity increased from 65 per cent to nearly 78 per cent, with these professionals reporting a 30 per cent jump in confidence in using generative AI tools.

These were not technologists, but the operational core of modern organisations. The implication is clear: When human-AI partnership is intentional, the workforce becomes amplified, not displaced.

What an AI-fluent boardroom actually looks like
The most interesting shift in boardrooms today is the move from fear to experimentation.

Consider a board evaluating expansion into a new South-east Asian market. Traditionally, directors might wait months for consultant reports. Today, AI systems can ingest economic indicators, regulatory shifts, competitor activity and social sentiment, generating alternative future scenarios within minutes.

Directors interrogate outputs, challenge assumptions and layer in moral and reputational considerations. Debate becomes sharper. Blind spots shrink. Strategic agility improves.

At the executive level, AI is increasingly acting as a decision partner. In a reputational crisis, AI can analyse live stakeholder sentiment and simulate response strategies across audiences.

Leaders describe using these systems not as delegation, but as augmentation – a structured sounding board.

Chief human resources officers use AI to detect overlooked leadership potential, while retaining human judgment on character and culture. Audit committees deploy AI as continuous risk sentinels. Sustainability teams pair machine modelling with human creativity to design viable transitions.

Tech fluency will now extend to physical AI – a leader needs to appreciate the ramifications of AI embedded in physical reality such as a robot or a building.

We need to start thinking about the impact on man and the environment when intelligence is everywhere. The human-AI partnership is therefore not a technical upgrade. It is a leadership transformation.

Productively co-existing with AI
Transformation cannot begin at the board table alone; it must be cultivated across organisations – and earlier.

Workforces need structured exposure to AI not as a novelty, but as a core capability. Programmes that blend design thinking with AI experimentation show that non-technical professionals can meaningfully increase productivity and creative confidence when equipped with frameworks, guard rails and hands-on practice.

Education systems are beginning to reframe AI literacy as foundational, not optional. Businesses must do the same.

In the age of AI, boards and C-suites face a simple choice: partner – or perish.

• Danny Koh is managing director, South-east Asia, at Spencer Stuart, an executive search and leadership consulting firm. Phoon Kok Kwang is president of SUTD.