Rewire or Retire: Why AI Is a Leadership Issue, Not a Technology Problem | Marco Ryan

Marco and his co-author Alastair Lechler developed the concept of DQ—Digital Intelligence—as a way for non-technical leaders to benchmark where they stand.

“Most executives are, let’s be generous, nearsighted when it comes to AI,” Marco explains. “I wouldn’t quite say they’re blind, but they’re nearsighted. They haven’t really understood the what, the if, the how, the implications of it.”

DQ works like an IQ test, scored out of 200, assessing both theoretical understanding and practical application. Leaders can compare themselves against peers by sector, geography, or role—CFOs against other CFOs, HR officers in the UK against HR officers in the US.

But the deeper point isn’t the score. It’s what the assessment reveals about curiosity.

“Leaders need to become more curious. The ‘what if’ question is fundamental to digital curiosity. What if a startup came in and created something better and disaggregated us?”

Marco illustrates this from his BP days, where they were building the UK’s largest electric vehicle charging network. The team constantly asked: what if a competitor emerged with something that ate their lunch?

“Most leaders are not digitally curious enough because they are embarrassed, they’re frightened, they’re worried, they’re overwhelmed perhaps by their lack of understanding of AI.”

The solution isn’t deep technical expertise. Marco advocates for T-shaped leaders—deep in one vertical domain but broad across the horizontal. “You don’t need to be the technical expert, but you do need to be able to ask the right questions. And more importantly, you need to understand the consequences of those questions.”

Marco shares a vivid example of AI’s potential to transform how leaders work.

“I was asked to talk to the board of a large multinational about AI. I noticed three of them had iPads and four had the usual Amazon forest of PowerPoint. I asked the chairman: how many pages, and how long did it take you to read it?”

The chairman admitted he’d received the pack ten days earlier but hadn’t read every page. He’d made notes but felt least comfortable with the sessions on digital transformation and technology.

“I said: right, I’ve got hold of your board pack. I’ve put it in a clean area, ring-fenced so it’s not going outside this virtual room. I’m going to write you a prompt.”

The prompt asked AI to act as a board member, summarise key points from each paper, generate deep insights, develop tough questions, anticipate likely answers, and suggest follow-up thoughts for the executives.

“Within seconds, it spouted out the response. He said: that’s impossible, it can’t have read all that in that time. I said: no, it has.”

The chairman looked at the output. “But this is far better than I’ve produced.”

“I said: it’s not that I’m doubting your experience. But the process you were going through—you didn’t apply your knowledge or insight. You were suffering through the boring work of creating summaries, which in most cases you’d ask an assistant to do.”

Marco describes it as a Damascus Road moment—a sudden realisation of how AI could augment existing work. The board meeting still mattered. The human dynamics remained unchanged. But the preparation became radically more efficient, allowing the meeting to focus on substance rather than slogging through summaries.

“Now the board meeting was very different—getting to the nitty gritty of the facts rather than people presenting with blank faces, not sure how it’s been received, months of preparation, just inefficient.”

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