Leading Disruption with Charlene Li

I didn't plan to talk about sustainability at a recent keynote I gave for the American Institute of Architects. Turned out it was the only thing anyone wanted to talk about afterward. So today I'm tackling the question head-on: is AI bad for the planet? My answer isn't "stop using AI" — it's "use it lighter." I walk through the real numbers on data center water and power use, then break down four practical moves any leader can make: right-sizing your models (you don't need a frontier model to draft an email), using small and edge models that run locally, building context graphs instead of re-feeding entire documents, and fixing "prompt thrashing" through better batching. The throughline: sustainability isn't separate from responsible AI — it is responsible AI.

Everyone in the C-suite thinks they should own AI — the CIO, COO, CFO, chief risk officer, CHRO, and CDO can all make a compelling case. Charlene explains why that's exactly the problem, and why chief AI officers have been failing across organizations for two years. Drawing on the Four Building Blocks framework from Winning with AI, she introduces the "conductor" model: one person whose sole job is to coordinate AI's outcomes, roadmap ("the score"), and pace ("the tempo") across every department — without owning any single piece of it. Using an orchestra metaphor and the real-world example of Sandy Carter's rise to Chief Business Officer at Unstoppable Domains, Charlene lays out what the conductor role actually owns, when a CEO can (and can't) play it, and the three questions every board should be asking about AI leadership right now.

Disruption isn't coming, it's here.

Every week, strategist and author Charlene Li gives leaders the frameworks, the honesty, and the real-world perspective to lead through AI, organizational change, and conditions no one trained them for.

Short episodes. No filler.

If your palms are a little sweaty, good.