Mike Walsh
Most AI investment is still trapped in pilots, demos and isolated tools. The harder problem is redesigning how the organisation actually decides, staffs and operates once machines do meaningful work. Senior teams need a way to move from AI as a project portfolio to AI as the operating model.
Mike Walsh is a futurist and CEO of the consultancy Tomorrow who helps senior teams redesign decision-making, leadership and operating models for an AI-driven business.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Mike Walsh
- He works on the leadership and operating-model question that AI keynotes usually skip: who decides, with what data, supported by which machine systems, and what that means for org design.
- His thesis is published, not improvised. The Algorithmic Leader (Page Two, 2019) sets out ten principles for leading in the algorithmic age and has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Polish and Russian.
- His next book, Abundant Intelligence, is being published by Harvard Business Review Press with Deloitte’s Global Head of AI Nitin Mittal, giving boards a current reference point on hybrid human and machine workforces.
- He brings in-the-room exposure to Fortune 500 reinvention programmes through Tomorrow, with named advisory work across the BBC, HSBC, Philips, Fujifilm, Richemont and Televisa.
- He writes for the audience he speaks to. As a regular Harvard Business Review columnist, his arguments are pressure-tested with the same readers buying him.
Biography highlights
- CEO of Tomorrow, a global consultancy on designing companies for the 21st century.
- Author of The Algorithmic Leader (Page Two, 2019), translated into six languages.
- Forthcoming book Abundant Intelligence with Harvard Business Review Press, co-authored with Deloitte’s Global Head of AI, Nitin Mittal.
- Regular Harvard Business Review columnist; bylines in Inc., BusinessWeek, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal.
- Host of the Between Worlds podcast and the YouTube series The Future is Elsewhere.
- Founder of Jupiter Research in Asia Pacific and former senior strategy executive at News Corporation in the region.
Biography
Boards now buy AI tools faster than they redesign the organisations using them. The Algorithmic Leader, published by Page Two in 2019, was an early attempt to put that mismatch into a framework senior leaders could use, with ten principles for working in an environment where machine systems share the decision load. The book has since been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Polish and Russian.
The work sits inside a longer career arc. Tomorrow, the consultancy Walsh founded in Hong Kong, advises CEOs and executive teams of multinationals including the BBC, HSBC, Philips, Fujifilm, Richemont and Televisa on reinvention in the algorithmic age. Earlier roles include founding Jupiter Research in Asia Pacific, an early tracker of e-commerce and digital business adoption, and senior strategy positions at News Corporation in the region.
Publishing has been the spine of the practice. Futuretainment, published by Phaidon in 2009, won an Art Directors Club design award in New York. The Dictionary of Dangerous Ideas followed in 2014. As a regular Harvard Business Review columnist, with bylines in Inc., BusinessWeek, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, Walsh writes for the same audience he advises and speaks to.
The forthcoming work is where the operating-model question gets sharper. Abundant Intelligence, due from Harvard Business Review Press, is co-authored with Nitin Mittal, Deloitte’s Global Head of AI, and examines how organisations orchestrate hybrid human-and-machine workforces. The thread across the books, the consultancy and the keynotes is consistent: the leadership question, not the technology question, is the one boards keep underestimating.
Key speaking topics
- Algorithmic leadership and decision-making
- AI agents and digital labour
- Designing organisations for the 21st century
- Disruptive innovation and new business models
- Digital ethics in machine-led decisions
- The future of work in an AI-driven economy
- Strategic foresight for senior leaders
Ideal for
- Boards and executive committees setting AI strategy beyond pilots
- CEOs, COOs and Chief Strategy Officers redesigning operating models
- Chief AI Officers, Chief Digital Officers and transformation leads
- Leadership and learning programmes preparing senior cohorts for AI-era decision-making
Audience outcomes
- A clearer language for the leadership question inside AI investment, not just the technology question
- A framework, drawn from The Algorithmic Leader, for ten shifts in how senior teams decide and operate
- Named cases of how multinationals are restructuring around hybrid human-and-machine work
- A sharper view of which executive habits, hiring patterns and decision rights age badly in an AI-driven business
- A working definition of digital labour and what it changes for org design, talent and accountability
Talks
A keynote on how senior leaders need to rethink decision-making, talent and organisational design when machine systems share the cognitive load.
Key takeaways:
- The leadership shifts that separate AI-native organisations from AI-bolted-on ones
- How decision rights, data and judgement get reallocated between humans and algorithms
- A working set of principles drawn from the book of the same name
A keynote on agentic AI as a workforce question, not a tooling question, and what that means for managers, structures and accountability.
Key takeaways:
- What digital labour actually changes inside an operating model
- How to think about supervision, escalation and trust for autonomous agents
- The implications for hiring, leadership development and span of control
A keynote on the seven priorities Walsh argues senior teams must work through to reinvent legacy organisations for an algorithmic economy.
Key takeaways:
- Where 20th-century operating models break down under AI and platform competition
- How leading multinationals are reorganising around data, decisions and customer dynamics
- The cultural and structural moves senior leaders most often underestimate