Explore how AI summaries and filtered information can shape leadership decisions, and why asking “What am I missing?” matters.
When we recently talked with psychologist and leadership expert Nik Kinley on the Business Impact Lab Podcast, one idea stayed with me: as people gain power, the information they receive can change.
Employees may filter what they share with leaders. Bad news can move more slowly. Complex information gets summarized, uncertainty gets cleaned up, and context can disappear along the way. That doesn’t necessarily mean anyone is purposely trying to stop information from getting through. Often, people are simply trying to be helpful, efficient, or respectful of a leader’s time.
This idea is explored in Nik’s book, The Power Trap. One of the risks is that as information moves through an organization, it can become more simplified along the way. That can be helpful, but simplification can also remove important context.
Nik pointed out in our podcast conversation that, in some ways, AI introduces a similar challenge. It is incredibly good at taking something messy and making it easier to understand. It can summarize reports, organize ideas, and turn complicated information into something clear and usable. The problem is that sometimes the mess matters, and by simplifying it, we may lose something valuable.
The parts that don’t fit neatly into a summary may contain important history or explain why a decision was made in the first place. Disagreement between two sources matters too. When information is repeatedly simplified, whether by people moving it up an organization or by AI helping us process it, we risk becoming further removed from the original picture.
Kinley’s work also points to another challenge: leaders can become more susceptible to overconfidence in their own judgment. That creates an interesting combination. The information reaching us may be less complete, while at the same time we may feel increasingly confident that we understand it.
AI can potentially amplify both sides of that problem. It makes information easier to consume, but clear and confident-sounding information can also make it easier to feel like we understand more than we actually do.
This isn’t an argument against using AI to summarize information. AI summaries can help us save time and highlight key ideas and trends. For me, the more useful takeaway from my conversation with Nik was that access to more information is not the same as seeing the full picture.
So, what’s the solution? Like most things in life, there isn’t exactly an easy fix. But we can reduce some of the risk by staying curious and asking better questions. One question that may be especially valuable for leaders is:
What was left out of the summary? Where is the uncertainty? Who sees this differently? What context do I need before making the decision?
And if AI helped organize the information, it may also be worth asking: What did it simplify for me, and do I need to go back to the source?
Nik’s work is a useful reminder that leadership does not automatically give us a clearer view. The more information is filtered, summarized, and simplified for us, the more important it becomes to stay curious about what might have been lost along the way.
Good leadership may require us to question not only the information in front of us, but also how that information got there.
