Why reasoning AI demands spacious leadership

The best reasoning AI implementations I've witnessed share a common thread: leaders who resist the pressure to deploy quickly and instead create space for their teams to think strategically about the bigger picture. This aligns perfectly with Megan Reitz and John Higgins' Harvard Business Review research on "spacious thinking."

Their framework distinguishes between the doing mode—a narrow focus on immediate tasks—and the spacious mode, where teams pay attention expansively to relationships, interdependencies, and possibilities. For AI teams, this distinction is crucial. Doing mode gets you faster tool adoption; spacious mode helps you understand whether you're solving the right problems with the right approach.

In practice, this means the difference between asking "How quickly can we integrate this reasoning model?" versus "What does this technology reveal about our decision-making processes, and how should that shape our approach?" The latter question leads to insights about governance, human oversight, and strategic positioning that purely task-focused thinking misses.

The research shows that employees often avoid spacious thinking because it feels career-limiting—too slow, too philosophical for a results-driven environment. With AI, this pressure intensifies. Everyone wants to move fast to stay competitive, but speed without strategic thinking leads to implementations that optimize for the wrong outcomes or miss critical risks.

Leaders can counter this by structuring meetings that prioritize learning and strategic thinking alongside implementation updates. When a team member raises concerns about AI bias or questions whether a model's reasoning process aligns with company values, recognize that as valuable, spacious thinking, not obstruction. Create environments where teams feel safe to pause and examine assumptions about what AI should and shouldn't do in your organization.

The irony is that spacious thinking becomes more important as AI gets more capable, not less. Reasoning models can generate sophisticated analysis and recommendations, but they can't determine whether those recommendations serve your strategic goals or align with your values. Only teams with space to think critically about AI's role can maintain that essential human judgment. ⚖️

https://hbr.org/2025/07/the-best-leaders-encourage-spacious-thinking