Modern Leadership: A Series on the Craft of Senior Leadership
A growing series on senior leadership for data and AI leaders. Executive presence, the seven rules of modern senior leadership, and the research behind why some leaders keep growing while others plateau.
A Growing Series on the Craft of Senior Leadership
Frameworks, principles, and patterns observed across two decades of building and leading data and AI organizations. The goal of this series is not completeness. It is specificity.
The Through Line
The craft of senior leadership has two sides. Subtraction: removing the verbal and behavioral habits that quietly undercut your presence in a room. Addition: building the visibility, relationships, and narrative that turn excellent work into advancement. Part 1 covers the first. Part 2 covers the second. Future parts will cover the layers beyond both.
Most leadership writing is either academic or inspirational. This series is neither. Each part is a single, concrete topic you can test on Monday morning.
What's in the Series
New readers: start with Part 1. It's the foundation the rest builds on.
Who This Is For
Leaders at the point where expertise stops being the job. If your career growth now depends on judgment, influence, and presence rather than individual contribution, this series is written for you. It assumes you already know your craft. What it offers is the layer above.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Modern Leadership series about?
Modern Leadership is a growing series for senior leaders in data and AI organizations. It treats leadership as a craft rather than a personality trait, drawing on research from Tasha Eurich, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Herminia Ibarra, and others alongside two decades of operating experience. Part 1 covers executive presence as a subtractive skill. Part 2 covers what separates senior leaders who keep growing from those who plateau.
Who is the Modern Leadership series for?
Senior leaders, executives, and high-potential individual contributors in data, AI, engineering, and adjacent disciplines who are at or near the point where pure expertise stops being enough. The frameworks apply most directly to Chief Data Officers, Chief AI Officers, VPs, Directors, and Principal-level technologists navigating senior-level transitions.
What topics does the Modern Leadership series cover?
Executive presence and the verbal habits that erode it. The seven rules of modern senior leadership including sponsorship, ambiguity, perspective, future-proofing, self-awareness, succession, and storytelling. Research-backed patterns observed in leaders who keep growing past the ceiling where most plateau.
How is the Modern Leadership series different from typical leadership advice?
It is grounded in published academic research rather than personal anecdote, written from the perspective of someone who has built and led data and AI organizations at Fortune 500 scale, and explicitly avoids the soft-skills tropes that show up in most leadership content. Each part is short, dense, and designed to be returned to across a year.
About the author
Nidhi Vichare is a Chief Data and AI Officer, enterprise AI architect, and data platform executive. She writes about enterprise AI strategy, data architecture, causal measurement, AI ROI, agentic systems, and modern leadership for senior data and AI leaders.