Louise Romeo.
Louise Romeo, Chief Commercial & Operating Officer Starcom Australia
Across our industry, AI is increasing speed, expanding inputs and changing expectations in real time. It helps teams generate more options, move faster and access capability that once sat in specialist crafts. But it is also exposing a hard truth: faster output does not automatically create better judgement.
The real opportunity is not just how quickly we can adopt AI, but how deliberately we learn with it. One of the clearest lessons for me on learning without a playbook came not from technology, but from being a parent.
Parenting teaches you very quickly that there is no fixed model to follow. What worked yesterday may not work today. You observe, test, adjust, and try again. It requires a flexible mindset: to be more curious, more deliberate in the questions asked, and faster in adapting when the first answer is not the right one. Progress rarely comes from getting it right once; it comes from improving how you respond.
That is exactly the shift AI is asking of leaders now. We are learning inside a system that responds to the quality of our inputs, the clear articulation of our expectations, and the discipline of our feedback. Just like being a parent.
The organisations that will create the most value from AI will not be those that treat it as a shortcut. They will be the ones that understand how to teach it, shape it and build judgement around it – just like helping a child thrive.
There is no set model
Parenting strips away the illusion that certainty comes first. You make decisions in motion, often with partial information, and you learn by paying attention to what changes. The same is true of AI. Leaders cannot wait for perfect understanding before they begin. Capability is built through use, not before it.
This matters because many organisations are still approaching AI as if there will be a settled operating model to copy. There won’t be. The technology is moving too quickly, and its value is too dependent on context. What works for one team, client or workflow may not directly translate to another. The organisations that win with AI will be the most deliberate teachers of the system, setting up for sustainable growth.
The system learns what you reinforce
One of the most powerful lessons in parenting is what you reinforce compounds. What you tolerate, correct or reward becomes part of the system over time. That same principle applies to AI.
Every prompt, every refinement and every accepted output sends a signal. If questions are shallow, outputs will be shallow. If assumptions go unchallenged, biased thinking will scale. If speed is rewarded over quality, the system will learn that volume matters more than value. When better questions are asked, clearer context is provided and feedback is applied consistently, the quality of the work improves.
This is where AI adoption becomes a leadership discipline. Leaders are not just introducing tools into workflows. They are shaping behaviours, expectations and decision standards around those tools. The system will learn anyway; the question is whether we are intentional about what we are teaching it. That often comes down to something deceptively simple: asking better questions. In both parenting and AI, the response is only ever as good as the input.
Judgement still has to be taught
AI is rapidly democratising execution. Tasks are becoming faster, easier and more accessible. That means execution itself is becoming less of a differentiator. Value is shifting upstream into judgement.
Judgement is the ability to decide what matters: what to prioritise, what to challenge and what to back. It sits at the intersection of brand, performance, context and commercial impact. AI can generate options, but it cannot take responsibility for choosing the right one.
This is another lesson parenting makes clear. You do not build judgement through instruction alone. You build it through repetition, context, correction and conversation. You model what good looks like, explain why it matters and create feedback loops that help improve learning over time.
That is now the leadership challenge with AI. If we want more distinctive work, we need to be clearer about what distinctiveness means. If we want AI to support stronger commercial decisions, we need leaders close enough to the work to shape the judgement behind it.
The opportunity is not simply to adopt AI faster. It is to become more deliberate in how we learn with it.
Parenting taught me that progress rarely comes from certainty. It comes from presence, consistency and the willingness to adapt when the old response no longer works.
That may be the most useful leadership lesson for the AI era.