At the core is a well-documented bias toward confidence over competence. Studies consistently show that people who speak decisively, project certainty, and take credit for wins—whether earned or not—are more likely to be perceived as leadership material. In ambiguous environments, boards and senior managers often mistake boldness for ability. As long as a leader can narrate failure convincingly—blaming market headwinds, legacy systems, or uncooperative teams—their upward momentum may continue.

Another driver is asymmetric accountability. Senior executives typically oversee vast, complex systems where outcomes are hard to tie directly to individual decisions. When results are good, credit flows upward. When results are bad, blame diffuses downward, and middle managers, project leads, and market conditions become convenient shock absorbers. This allows underperforming leaders to survive long enough to secure their next promotion.

Then there’s the mobility illusion. In many industries, frequent job changes are read as ambition and momentum rather than warning signs. An executive who leaves after short, uneven tenures can reframe each exit as a “growth opportunity” or a strategic pivot. Recruiters and boards, under pressure to fill top roles quickly, often rely on résumé signals, like brand-name firms, inflated titles, and elite networks, rather than deep performance audits.

Ironically, early visibility can also accelerate failure upward. High-profile roles magnify both success and failure, but they also increase name recognition. An executive who runs a troubled division at a global firm may preside over mediocre results, yet emerge with a reputation as a “big-company leader,” making them attractive for a CEO role elsewhere.

The reckoning usually comes only at the top. As CEO, the buffers disappear. There is no one left to blame, and performance is judged in the blunt language of earnings, stock price, profitability, or layoffs. The traits that once fueled ascent, such as overconfidence, risk-shifting, and narrative control, become liabilities under full scrutiny.

The central lesson for aspiring CEOs is that the very system that rewards confidence, visibility, and narrative control on the way up often masks weak execution until the top job strips those protections away. Future leaders who want to avoid “failing upward” must deliberately build careers grounded in verifiable results and direct ownership of outcomes because at the CEO level, there is no narrative strong enough to substitute for performance.

Ruth Umoh
ruth.umoh@fortune.com

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Leadership lesson

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News to know

Investors are questioning OpenAI’s profitability amid its massive spending while increasingly viewing Alphabet as the deeper-pocketed winner in the AI race. Fortune

Trump warned that Netflix’s $72 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery could face antitrust scrutiny, suggesting it would create an overly dominant force in streaming. Fortune

An etiquette camp is trying to help Silicon Valley shed its sloppy image by teaching tech elites how to dress and behave as their influence grows. WaPo

IBM is reportedly in advanced talks to buy data-infrastructure firm Confluent for about $11 billion, bolstering its AI data capabilities. WSJ

Even as women reach top roles in politics and business at record levels, public confidence in their leadership is stagnating or declining. Bloomberg

Terence “Bud” Crawford, the undefeated 38-year-old boxing champion, has earned more than $100 million and even turned Warren Buffett into a fan. Forbes

Big Tech leaders now warn that artificial intelligence is advancing to the point where it could begin replacing even CEOs, reshaping the very top of corporate leadership. WSJ

That makes perfect sense. This generation began university when ChatGPT launched in 2022. They now account for roughly half of all ChatGPT usage, applying it to everything from research to better decision-making in knowledge-intensive work. 

Some people worry that AI-driven hiring slowdowns are disproportionately impacting younger workers. Yet the greater opportunity lies in a new generation of AI-native professionals entering the workforce equipped for how technology is transforming roles, teams, and leadership.

Better human connectivity 

One of the first tangible benefits of generative AI is that it allows individual contributors to take on tasks once handled by managers. Research by Harvard Business School found that access to Copilot increased employee productivity by 5% in core tasks. As productivity rises and hierarchies flatten, early-career employees using AI are empowered to focus on outcomes, learn faster, and contribute at a higher level.

Yet personal productivity is not the real measure of progress. What matters most is how well teams perform together. Individual AI gains only create business impact when they align with team goals and that requires greater transparency, alignment, and accountability.

At Nokia, we ensure that everyone has clear, measurable goals that support their teams’ objectives. Leaders need to be open about their goals to their managers and to their reports. And everyone means everyone. Me included. That way goals are not only about recognition and reward. They become an ongoing dialogue between leaders and their teams. It’s how we’re building a continuous learning culture that thrives on feedback and agility, both essential in the AI era. 

Humans empowered with AI, not humans versus AI

AI’s true power lies in augmenting human skills. Every role has a core purpose – whether in strategy, creativity, or technical problem-solving – and AI helps people focus on that. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 60 chatbots were deployed in 30 countries to handle routine public health queries, freeing up healthcare workers to focus on critical patient care. Most health services never looked back. 

The same pattern applies inside companies. Some of the routine tasks given to new hires are drudge work and not a learning experience. AI gives us a chance to rethink the onboarding, training, and career development process.

Take an early-career engineer. Onboarding can be a slow process of documentation and waiting for reviews. AI can act as an always-on coach that gives quick guidance and helps people ramp up. Mentors then spend less time on the basics and more time helping engineers solve real problems. Engineers can also have smart agents testing their designs, ideas, and simulating potential outcomes. In this way, AI strengthens, rather than substitutes, the human connection between junior engineers and their mentors and helps unlock potential faster.

Encourage experimentation and entrepreneurship 

During two decades of the Internet Supercycle (1998-2018), start-ups created trillions of dollars in economic value and roughly half of all new jobs in OECD countries. 

As AI lowers the barriers to launching and scaling ventures, established companies must find new ways to encourage experimentation, nurture innovation through rapid iterations, and give employees the chance to commercialize and scale their ideas.

There is a generational shift that increases the urgency: more than 60% of Gen Z Europeans hope to start their own businesses within five years, according to one survey. To secure this talent, large organizations must provide the attributes that make entrepreneurship attractive. Empowering people with agility, autonomy, and faster decision-making creates an edge in attracting and keeping top talent.

At Nokia, our Technology and AI Organization is designed to strengthen innovation capabilities, encourage entrepreneurial thinking, and give teams the support to turn ideas into real outcomes.

More coaching, less managing 

Sporting analogies are often overused in business as the two worlds don’t perfectly align, yet the evolution of leadership in elite football offers useful lessons. Traditionally, managers oversaw everything on and off the pitch. Today, head coaches focus on building the right team and culture to win. 

Luis Enrique, the manager of Paris-St. Germain football club, last season’s UEFA Champion’s League winner, exemplifies this shift. He transformed a team of stars into a star team, while also evolving his coaching style, elevating both individual and collective potential.

Of course, CEOs must switch between both roles (as I said, the worlds don’t perfectly align) – setting vision and strategy while also cultivating the right team and culture to succeed. AI can help leaders do both with more focus. It gives us quicker insight into what is working, what is not, and where teams need support.

I have been testing these tools with my own leadership team. We are using generative AI to help us evaluate our decisions and to understand how we work together. It has revealed patterns we might have missed, and it has helped us get to the real issues faster. It does not replace judgment or experience. It supports them.

Yet the core of leadership does not change. AI cannot build trust. It cannot set expectations. It cannot create a culture that learns, improves, and takes responsibility. That still comes from people. And in a world shaped by AI, the leaders who succeed will be the ones who coach, who listen, and who help teams move faster with confidence.

Nokia’s technology connects intelligence around the world. Inside the company, connecting intelligence is about how people work together. It means giving teams the tools, support and culture they need to grow and perform with confidence. Connecting intelligence is how teams win.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

But in reality, firms want to build more with less—and even though visions are created by designers, they don’t always get to see them to fruition. Instead, intermediaries may be placed in charge of procurements and overseeing the financial costs of executing designs.

“The process is not often as linear as we [designers] would like it to be, and at times we even get slightly cut out, and something comes out on the other side that wasn’t really what we were expecting,” said Tina Norden, a partner and principal at design firm Conran and Partners, at the Fortune Brainstorm Design forum in Macau on Dec. 2.

“To have a better quality product, communication is very much needed,” added Daisuke Hironaka, the CEO of Stellar Works, a furniture company based in Shanghai. 

Yet those tasked with procurement are often “money people” who may not value good design—instead forsaking it to cut costs. More education on the business value of quality design is needed, Norden argued.

When one builds something, she said, there are both capital investment and a lifecycle cost. “If you’re spending a bit more money on good quality furniture, flooring, whatever it might be, arguably, it should last a lot longer, and so it’s much better value.”

Investing in well-designed products is also better for the environment, Norden added, as they don’t have to be replaced as quickly.

Attempts to cut costs may also backfire in the long run, said Hironaka, as business owners may have to foot higher maintenance bills if products are of poor design and make.

AI in interior and furniture design

Though designers have largely been slow adopters of AI, some luminaries like Daisuke are attempting to integrate it into their team’s workflow.

AI can help accelerate the process of designing bespoke furniture, Daisuke explained, especially for large-scale projects like hotels. 

A team may take a month to 45 days to create drawings for 200 pieces of custom-made furniture, the designer said, but AI can speed up this process. “We designed a lot in the past, and if AI can use these archives, study [them] and help to do the engineering, that makes it more helpful for designers.” 

Yet designers can rest easy as AI won’t ever be able to replace the human touch they bring, Norden said. 

“There is something about the human touch, and about understanding how we like to use our spaces, how we enjoy space, how we perceive spaces, that will always be there—but AI should be something that can assist us [in] getting to that point quicker.”

She added that creatives can instead view AI as a tool for tasks that are time-consuming but “don’t need ultimate creativity,” like researching and three-dimensionalizing designs.

“As designers, we like to procrastinate and think about things for a very long time to get them just right, [but] we can get some help in doing things faster.”