Leadership in the Age of No Playbook │Davos Day Two

R. Kat Morse, Acting Head of Solutions Hub, 28 January 2026.

Davos Day Two insights: why AI is a human challenge, and how ethical leadership, culture, and trust shape the future of technology and organisations.

If Day One in Davos was about systems, infrastructure, and speed, Day Two was about something more nebulous and harder: leadership as behaviour. Across many different rooms and conversations, one message kept surfacing - AI is not a technical problem. It is a human one. And how we choose to lead right now will shape far more than technology.

Here are the threads that stayed with me.

AI is not a tech problem.

This came up everywhere. Over breakfast with women leaders, including the women who founded 100 Women at Davos and WomenInTech. In panels with CMOs at the FQ Lounge (The Female Quotient). In discussions about national resilience. The gap is not tools or computing. It is mindset, culture, and leadership's willingness to change how work actually happens.

Many organisations say they are “doing AI.” Few are becoming AI-capable. The bottleneck is people, not platforms.

Leadership now means leading humans and AI

We are rapidly moving into a world where leaders will manage hybrid teams: humans and AI systems working together. That requires new decision flows, new accountability, and new forms of judgment. You cannot bolt AI onto old workflows and call it progress.

Human-in-the-loop is not a slogan. It is an ethical requirement.

Culture eats every AI strategy

This may have been the most consistent theme of the entire week. AI adoption fails when culture does not shift. Fear, control, perfectionism, and internal politics kill progress faster than any technical limitation.

One line stayed with me: imperfection is the new perfection. Leaders who show up honestly, admit what they are learning, and lead in public build trust. In the AI age, authenticity is not optional.

Power is shifting inside organisations

Mid-level leaders who understand AI and know where the real pain points live are the critical change agents. This matters ethically. Power is moving away from titles toward capability. Organisations that ignore this will reinforce inequality and weaken governance at the same time.

AI can be a real equaliser, especially for women, but only if access, skills, and agency are intentional.

Hope is not soft. It is strategic.

One of the most meaningful moments of Day Two was a leadership circle, where I met international human rights lawyer Karen Tse, founder and head of International Bridges to Justice. We talked about hope, connection, and whole intelligence—not as feel-good concepts, but as conditions for ethical decision-making.

Leaders cannot govern well without hope. People do not take responsibility if they feel disconnected or unseen. Ethics starts with connection.

Realism matters

A conversation on the economy and leadership with Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, brought a counterbalance. No one knows exactly what comes next. The world is complex and moving fast. Dialogue without facts is useless. Programmes that do not work should not exist. Ethics that cannot survive reality are not ethics.

The uncomfortable questions are the right ones

The final session of the day asked a question that stayed with me long after it ended: if AI could genuinely solve humanity’s biggest problems better than governments, should we let it? And if we did, what would we lose in the process?

Identity. Autonomy. Meaning. Love. Choice.

“I love tech,” said musician-activist will.i.am, “but I love humans more.” That may be the most important ethical statement of the week.

Closing

Day Two reminded me why Davos matters. Not because it has answers, but because it creates spaces where people are willing to sit with hard questions together. Ethics, at this point, is not about slowing down innovation. It is about helping leaders move forward with clarity, courage, and humanity.

We are all shaping what comes next, whether we admit it or not. Are we ready?