The Growing Complexity of Leadership: Why Intelligence is Falling Behind

In today’s world, the tools that make our lives easier are paradoxically making us less inclined to develop our intelligence. From an early age, we are taught to consume rather than create, to use rather than understand. Technology organizes for us, apps think for us, and frameworks dictate actions without requiring us to question their foundations. Even when we are tasked with doing something, the tools are designed to be so simple that they eliminate the struggle necessary for growth.

This convenience comes at a cost: our ability to think deeply, critically, and independently is stagnating. We no longer need to memorize, organize, or problem-solve—our devices, software, and systems do it for us. Knowledge acquisition has become superficial, limited to snippets of information rather than deep, contextual understanding. Art and literature, which once served as intellectual challenges, have turned into mere escapism, and while anyone can now write a book, few can comprehend the true depth of works created by authors with high cognitive abilities.

Education and instruction systems are failing, not simply due to inefficiency, but because they suffer from an increasingly wider gap between the cognitive demands of the modern world and the capacity they foster in students. Compounding this issue is a society that is increasingly edulcorated—sanitized of challenges and struggles that once nurtured cognitive growth from a young age. Opportunities for developing critical thinking, problem-solving, and intellectual resilience are diminishing, replaced by superficial knowledge acquisition and a focus on standardized outputs over deep learning.

This cognitive stagnation is not just an individual problem—it is a societal one, visible at every level, and it manifests most clearly among decision-makers who lack the intellectual tools to meet the complexities of their roles.

The Shifting Landscape of Decision-Making

Forty years ago, decision-makers operated in a world where the parameters were simpler, and macro results could often be achieved by adjusting a few key variables. For example, financial success might have been secured through relatively straightforward cost-cutting measures or scaling up operations. The interconnectivity of global markets, the advent of real-time technology, and the exponential growth of information channels were not yet factors.

Today, however, leaders face a multi-dimensional reality where decisions ripple across complex systems. Technological advances, cultural shifts, environmental concerns, geopolitical instability, and stakeholder expectations converge, creating an unprecedented level of intricacy.

Unfortunately, most leaders—CEOs included—lack the cognitive tools to navigate this complexity. Instead, they tend to focus narrowly on financial metrics, a simplistic lens that increasingly leads to suboptimal or even damaging decisions. This reliance on economics as the primary decision-making framework is not a reflection of intelligence but rather of its limitations in the face of rising complexity.

Redefining Intelligence for Modern Leadership

Intelligence is often associated with mathematical prowess, but in reality, it encompasses much more. True intelligence lies in the ability to account for multiple parameters across diverse contexts simultaneously. It’s about understanding the consequences of consequences—thinking several steps ahead and grasping how interconnected systems influence each other over time.

In essence, it’s about transitioning from a two-dimensional worldview to a three-dimensional one:

• Two-dimensional decision-making focuses on immediate cause-and-effect relationships, often limited to financial or operational outcomes. Or worse, on memory based interactions and decisions!
• Three-dimensional decision-making considers how decisions interact with social, technological, environmental, and human factors, creating cascading effects that unfold across time and space.

As the complexity of the world increases, so too does the level of intelligence required to make informed, holistic decisions. But herein lies the problem: human IQ does not appear to be rising at a pace that matches this growing complexity.

The IQ Gap: A Shrinking Pool of Capable Leaders

Studies suggest that the average IQ in many Western countries has stagnated or even declined in recent decades, a trend sometimes referred to as the "Flynn Effect reversal." This stagnation means that fewer and fewer people possess the cognitive ability to grasp the interconnected complexities required for modern leadership.

As a result, we’re witnessing the rise of a smaller and smaller elite:

1. Those intelligent enough to survive the demands of this new complexity.
2. Those wealthy enough to leverage the intelligence of others to maintain their influence.

This dynamic creates a troubling feedback loop. With fewer individuals capable of making well-rounded, insightful decisions, society becomes increasingly vulnerable to mediocrity, myopia, and stagnation at every level—from corporate boardrooms to government offices.

The Economics Prism: A Symptom of Mediocrity

When decision-makers lack the intellectual tools to comprehend complexity, they often retreat to the comfort of metrics they understand. Economics become the primary lens through which they view the world, reducing nuanced, multi-faceted problems to balance sheets and profit margins.

While financial health is undoubtedly important, it is not the whole picture. Over-reliance on this narrow prism often leads to shortsighted decisions, such as prioritizing quarterly earnings at the expense of long-term sustainability, employee well-being, or societal impact. This financial myopia is not just a symptom of limited intelligence but a dangerous hindrance to progress.

The Death of Vision in Politics: The Erosion of Civilization Planning

Looking at the previous 50 years and even centuries, politics was a forum for ideologies. Leaders debated ideas rooted in a vision for civilization’s future. Whether these ideologies were flawed or not, they provided a framework for proactive decision-making. Leaders made choices with long-term objectives in mind, and their reactive decisions were aligned with these overarching plans.

Today, politics has devolved into hyper-reactivity. The modern politician, bombarded by the constant buzz of information, lacks the space to think deeply or plan strategically. Instead of focusing on long-term civilization-building, today’s leaders act on impulse, driven by ego and short-term goals.

This shift has led to an era of acceptable aberrations, where policies are crafted not to solve problems or create progress, but to serve political agendas or secure momentary gains. The lack of intellectual rigor in leadership has created a glaring gap between the complexity of the problems we face and the cognitive abilities of those tasked with solving them. This raises a fundamental question:

Are politicians and governments still relevant?

If governments are a reflection of the societies they govern, then the decline in political leadership raises deeper concerns about democracy itself. In an age where information is abundant but critical thinking is scarce, can democratic systems, reliant on the collective intelligence of their populations, still function effectively?

The Blatant Misunderstanding of Agility, Symptom of Decades of Decline

The misuse of the term “agility” in the business world is a microcosm of this cognitive growing gap that I can assert to be a cognitive decline in regard to the expectations of our fast evolving societies and technologies. Agility is a physical property—defined as the ability to move quickly and easily. Yet, this straightforward concept has been misinterpreted and commodified, leading to widespread confusion about what it truly means.

Nearly every company in the world has engaged in some form of Agile transformation. These initiatives have reshaped the global market, disrupted roles and skills, and forced individuals into functions they are often ill-equipped to handle due to the sheer cognitive demands. Despite this, when asked which organizations have successfully achieved their objectives through these transformations, the answer is almost always silence.

Most Agile transformations focus on change for the sake of change, with no clear objectives or understanding of what success would even look like. Organizations obsess over frameworks, implement rigid structures that contradict agility’s principles, and over-rely on data while ignoring simplicity and common sense. This has resulted in a global IT market plagued by dysfunction, with:

• A lack of proper management doctrines to guide teams.
• Too few individuals with the cognitive capacity to navigate these complex systems.
• Companies unable to recognize cognitive capabilities in their own workforce, leading to talent mismanagement and stagnation.

Elon Musk and the Feedback of Cognitive Gaps

Elon Musk serves as a stark counterexample to this trend. His narrow-minded focus on absolute simplicity and efficiency, combined with his ability to take multiple parameters into account in every decision, has led to results that seem revolutionary to the world—but were obvious to those who could see the bigger picture.

Musk’s success is a blatant feedback loop, illustrating the vast gap in cognitive abilities separating most decision-makers from the simplest, most straightforward solutions. What Musk achieves with clarity and precision should be accessible to many leaders, yet it remains unattainable because of their inability to process complexity or adopt a clear, objective-driven mindset. This gap grows wider every month as the world becomes more complex and decision-makers fall further behind.

AI, AGI, and the Future of Cognition

Compounding this issue is the rise of Artificial Intelligence. The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) and other AI systems demonstrates the ability to process billions of parameters, anticipate multi-layered consequences, and set courses toward objectives that even seasoned decision-makers struggle to comprehend.

This presents both an opportunity and a threat:

• Opportunity: AI could act as humanity’s salvation, compensating for declining cognitive abilities by providing tools that anticipate and solve problems at a level beyond human capacity. It could become the catalyst for tackling challenges too complex for today’s decision-makers.
• Threat: The same AI systems could become a serious risk if society surrenders its ability to think, plan, and decide to these vastly superior intelligences—whether sentient or not. As the cognitive decline among leaders continues, the risk of abdication of human destiny to machines grows alarmingly real.

Without the ability to set clear, meaningful objectives, humanity risks becoming passengers in its own progress, driven by tools it no longer fully understands.

Progress is Inevitable, but Cognitive Decline is Not a Fatality

Despite these challenges, this gap in cognition does not have to be humanity’s fate. There are ways to mitigate and even capitalize on this complexity:

1. Recognize Cognitive Shortcomings: Leaders must embrace humility and acknowledge the limits of their understanding.
2. Retake control of AI definition and development: AI and decision-making tools are currently developped independently from any actual need. They create the need by bringing so much vaue that none can ignore them. Here is the problem, if AI capabilities define the needs of humans and answer those needs on its own. It already does not need humans. Think about it before you replace people by something that will also replace you if you follow this doctrine. To remain humans and relevant, AI development should align on a human support centric doctrine and only a collective move can make that happen.
3. Cultivate Cognitive Growth: With discipline, support, and the guidance of experts skilled in efficiency and high-level problem-solving, individuals can learn to expand their intellectual capacities. There are technics, methods and disciplines and you won't find them in bookstores.
4. Rediscover Simplicity: Balancing evidence-based practices with common sense and intuitive reasoning is essential to avoid paralysis by analysis.

By adopting these strategies, leaders and organizations can bridge the growing gap in cognitive ability, ensuring they remain relevant and capable of shaping a future that aligns with human values and aspirations. It is not a solution based approach, only trajectories and goals that would allow finding what I think are better solutions.

Conclusion: A Call for Cognitive Awareness

The world is becoming more complex, but this complexity is not insurmountable -yet-. Leaders who recognize their cognitive limitations, seek the right tools, and prioritize intellectual growth will gain a competitive advantage in the race to stay relevant.

As individuals, organizations, and societies, we must rise to this challenge—not just to survive, but to thrive in an era where intelligence, adaptability, and clarity will determine our collective destiny. Progress is inevitable. Whether we shape it or surrender to it is a choice we must all make.