The Skills AI Doesn't Have (yet) and Why Business Growth Still Needs Humans.

The Skills AI doesn't have just yet

AI is having a moment.

It can write your emails, draft your strategy, generate your ads, summarise your board pack and suggest seventeen “growth levers” you hadn’t thought of. It’s efficient, tireless, unemotional and an enthusiastic emoji lover. 

And yet. Despite all of this, many leadership teams feel less clear than ever.

Bob Sternfels, global managing partner at McKinsey, talked about how AI is changing work during an appearance at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The McKinsey boss pointed out something important: there are three skills AI simply can’t replicate: aspiration, judgment, and true creativity.

Not because the technology isn’t powerful. But because these skills are inherently human. And in my opinion, business growth, at its best, still is too.

Aspiration: AI doesn’t want anything

AI can tell you how to grow. It cannot tell you why.

It doesn’t wake up at 3am wondering if the business is heading in the right direction. It doesn’t feel the weight of payroll, reputation, legacy or ambition. It doesn’t care whether you build something forgettable or meaningful.

Aspiration, and by this I mean real ambition, is a human act. It’s a choice. It’s deciding what future you’re prepared to work towards and asking others to come with you on that journey, to build a vision and a culture that people want to be part of, and a growth 'energy' that only humans can feel.

Brands with momentum aspire. And no algorithm can do that on your behalf.

Judgment: the uncomfortable middle bit

Judgment is also about deciding what matters when everything looks urgent. It’s knowing when to ignore the data and when to lean into it. It’s understanding context, trade-offs, people, timing and consequences, not just probability.

This is where many scaleups wobble: they have yet more dashboards, even more insight, and less conviction.

Judgment doesn’t come from more information. It comes from clarity of values, experience and perspective - one of the skills AI doesn’t have yet.

Creativity & Connecting Ideas

AI is excellent at producing the most likely answer, but growth rarely comes from “most likely."

AI is brilliant at patterns, but leadership is about what to do when patterns collide, and it's about using divergent right-brain thinking to create opportunities in these moments.

Divergent right-brain thinking is a creative, free-flowing process of generating many unique ideas, solutions, or possibilities for a problem, focusing on breadth and originality rather than a single logical answer by the robots. And this can make a big difference to your business growth if you are open to it and get it right.

True creativity is the ability to connect ideas that haven’t been connected before. To say something unexpected. To build a brand that feels distinctive. AI can remix the past, but we humans can daydream, join dots, create new ideas, imagine the next thing, and in crowded markets, that difference matters. 

AI exposes any Lack of Clarity in Your Thinking 

When the strategy is vague, AI accelerates the vagueness. When ambition is unclear, AI scales confusion. When creativity is missing, AI fills the space with very competent mediocrity.

The businesses that will win won't be the ones “using the most AI”. They’ll be the ones with the clearest thinking, strongest judgment and the boldest ideas - the ones using AI as a multiplier, not a substitute for clarity of thought and creative strategy that moves the needle.

Beware the 'Sea of Sameness'

The rules of growth have changed because we now live in a world where everyone can produce more, and at a much faster rate than ever before. 

There’s a real danger for founders and CEOs right now: mistaking speed for progress and ending up in a sea of sameness. 

AI is trained on the same ideas, the same language, the same patterns. So when strategy and creativity are handed over to it unchecked, brands don’t get bolder, they just get blander. 

This is where leadership still matters. The job is not to outsource thinking to ChatGPT, but to act as the alchemist: to set the ambition, define the idea, apply judgment, and then use AI as a ruthless accelerator to execute, test, and scale faster than ever before. 

Used well, AI gives scaleups the power to punch far above their weight and challenge incumbents. Used lazily, it quietly erodes distinctiveness and turns ambition into average.

AI can multiply your advantage or industrialise your mediocrity. The difference is up to you, your ambitions for growth and your leadership.

At OSER, this is where we work: helping founders, CEOs and leadership teams bring clarity to ambition, apply judgment where it counts, and unlock creativity that actually moves the business forward. If you’re navigating growth decisions and want sharper thinking at the leadership level, we work with scaleups ready to challenge their category rather than blend into it.

If this resonates, you can book a strategic conversation with OSER here.