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Richard Foster-Fletcher founded and leads MKAI, a global responsible AI think tank whose network spans more than 1,500 executives across 101 countries.
Drawing on this reach, his work examines what most AI narratives overlook: not what AI does for organisations, but what it does to them. The drift in judgement, the loss of institutional memory and the reduction of core capabilities that efficiency gains can mask. He is known for original frameworks such as the Gravity of the Generic, Decision Erosion and the Ghost Consultant. These tools help leaders understand how intelligent systems reshape organisational distinctiveness and long-term competitiveness.
Richard advises boards, chairs cross-sector roundtables and has led in-depth conversations with more than 300 innovators, economists and academics on the trajectory of AI. His What Still Matters newsletter reaches more than 5,000 senior leaders and examines how automation reshapes leadership, coordination and strategic judgement. Through MKAI, he convenes practitioners across industry, academia and government to advance operationally grounded AI adoption and strengthen organisational capability.
His sessions give leadership teams a different lens. Richard shows where AI strengthens capability and where it undermines it, how efficiency gains can mask strategic vulnerability and what it takes to preserve distinctive judgement when systems increasingly think on behalf of organisations. Audiences leave with sharper language, practical models and immediately usable frameworks that support clearer, more resilient decision-making.
Most organisations treat AI adoption as an efficiency upgrade. But when everyone optimises the same way, efficiency becomes predictability. This keynote shows how AI-driven optimisation creates uniform patterns that competitors can anticipate, weakening strategic distinctiveness. Richard examines which capabilities are most vulnerable to homogenisation, how productivity metrics can mask strategic drift and why efficiency gains often come at the cost of competitive differentiation. The session reframes AI assessment: not by speed or savings, but by long-term impact on organisational identity.
AI promises to remove struggle from work, but struggle is where judgement, resilience and leadership capability are forged. This talk distinguishes productive friction from waste and examines why eliminating both leads to shallow decision-making and brittle organisational culture. Richard reveals how over-automation creates systems that appear smooth but lack depth, and why removing all difficulty weakens the capacity to handle it. The session clarifies which forms of struggle organisations cannot afford to lose.
As AI takes on more complexity, the experiences that once stretched people and built judgement are disappearing from daily work. This talk examines how AI changes the situations where future leaders would traditionally learn to navigate ambiguity and develop strategic depth. Richard highlights the risks of a leadership pipeline shaped more by system supervision than real decision-making. The session surfaces why some pipelines are hollowing out, and which formative experiences organisations can no longer assume will happen on their own.
Organisations assume they are adopting AI. In practice, AI is adopting them. Enterprise platforms embed their own logic, priorities and blind spots into thousands of daily decisions. Richard exposes how these systems reshape organisational thinking, where vendor influence overrides internal culture and how dependence forms without visibility. He examines the “ghost consultant” dynamic: external reasoning shaping critical work with no oversight and no brief. The session reveals where organisations may already be thinking like their vendors.
Richard delivered a highly engaging and thought-provoking session for our Director As Strategic Leader programme. His ability to explain how AI reshapes organisational judgement and capability made the session immediately relevant and deeply impactful for senior leaders.
Richard delivered an insightful and thought-provoking keynote on how AI is reshaping leadership, decision-making and organisational capability. His ability to make complex ideas accessible prompted genuine discussion among senior leaders. The session sparked exactly the kind of strategic conversation our members needed.
