Forbes Türkiye Interview | Mehmet Acar on Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Leadership
By Elçin Cirik Şenel January 5, 2026 / Forbes Türkiye
Featured by Forbes Türkiye
In this in-depth interview, Forbes Türkiye explores Mehmet Acar’s perspectives on artificial intelligence, designer leadership, and how organizations can combine human wisdom with AI to build the next generation of strategy, culture, and performance.
AI Is Ushering in the Era of the Designer Leader
The traditional definition of leadership is undergoing a fundamental transformation. “Artificial intelligence is ushering in the era of the designer leader,” says Mehmet Acar, Founder of ONDA Consultancy. In fact, leaders can now use up to 40 percent of the time gifted to them by AI to create entirely new business models.
A new generation of “designer leaders” is taking the stage leaders who know how to manage artificial intelligence effectively, distill insights from data, and blend them with human intuition. Traditional leadership models are increasingly struggling to pass the test in the age of AI.
Over the past three years, companies worldwide have invested between $30 and $40 billion in generative AI initiatives. Yet, according to a new study published by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in June 2025, only 5 percent of participating companies reported achieving financial gains from AI. As artificial intelligence increasingly dominates leadership agendas, it is also prompting leaders to question their own reason for existence.
“We need to begin by accepting one thing: nothing is as it seems,” says Mehmet Acar, Founder of ONDA Consultancy. Today, artificial intelligence is often perceived merely as a tool that accelerates work, writes content, or generates code. However, beneath the surface, a profound structural shift is taking place.
Mehmet Acar specializes in strategy design, strategic roadmaps, and organizational transformation. In his view, AI’s real impact is not productivity alone but its ability to exponentially increase value creation capacity. McKinsey’s latest reports support this perspective, projecting that generative AI could contribute an additional $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy. The key condition is that leaders must learn how to work with AI in the right way.
The Digital Twin
At its core, leadership is the ability to make the right decision at the right time. Yet, according to Oracle’s global research, 70 percent of executives are so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of available data that they admit they have become almost incapable of making decisions.
Referring to Daniel Kahneman’s final book, Noise, Mehmet Acar explains: “Human judgment is influenced by countless external factors from our mood to the weather. In other words, the human mind also produces noisy decisions.”
One of AI’s most remarkable contributions to leadership is its ability to reduce this mental noise.
Unaffected by emotional fluctuations, artificial intelligence presents pure data to the leader. It processes information, and the leader then integrates that information through the lens of the organization’s identity, vision, and ethical values.
“The relationship between leaders and artificial intelligence should not be viewed as a competition but rather as a dance. In this dance, leaders must remain agile enough to adapt to immediate changes while maintaining continuity in their vision,” says Acar.
In other words, leaders need to establish a symbiotic relationship with AI. In Acar’s terms, leaders should delegate routine, analytical, and pattern-recognition tasks to their “digital twin” artificial intelligence and then filter the resulting insights through their own experience and judgment.
The formula is simple: through a model of hybrid intelligence, leaders who combine human intelligence with artificial intelligence will gain significant power. Leaders should use AI’s processing capability as fuel for their own vision.
The Rise of Intuition
In this new environment, the leader’s greatest strength lies in managing uncertainty.
Artificial intelligence can predict a company’s sales performance for the next quarter with impressive accuracy by analyzing existing data. Yet it remains limited when it comes to anticipating the future.
For example, AI struggles with Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Black Swan theory. Rare, high-impact events that cannot be predicted through historical data such as the COVID-19 pandemic or global financial crises only become accessible to artificial intelligence once data about them exists. As recent history has shown, these types of disruptions remain beyond AI’s predictive capabilities.
According to Acar, this is precisely where the leader’s superpower emerges:
“The superpower that artificial intelligence can never possess is the ability to read context and generate intuitive foresight. The leader’s role is to sense possibilities that have not yet materialized and for which no data yet exists to perceive the Black Swans before they happen.”
This reality is likely to continue in the near future. Artificial intelligence will become the captain of the world of probabilities, while leaders will remain the captains of uncertainty.
Gartner’s latest projections clearly illustrate how valuable human inquiry and critical thinking have become. By 2026, it is estimated that 50 percent of companies will require “AI-free” assessments to evaluate candidates’ critical thinking capabilities.
Acar explains it this way:
“Asking the right questions and reading context still belong exclusively to human beings. Artificial intelligence generates content; leaders create context.”
To strengthen this increasingly critical intuitive capability, leaders need to become multidimensional. They should engage not only with management science but also with art, sports, and different disciplines. They should remain curious about industries beyond their own.
In the World Economic Forum’s recent Future of Jobs reports, curiosity and learning agility consistently rank among the most important capabilities of future leaders.
Furthermore, leaders’ abilities to motivate their teams, unite people around a vision, and demonstrate empathy remain areas where artificial intelligence cannot compete.
“Looking your team in the eyes during a crisis and giving them confidence is something only a human being a leader can do. Technology performs analysis; leaders create meaning,” says Acar.
The Gift of Time
There is no need to go back very far. Just two or three years ago, companies spent days collecting, reporting, and analyzing their data. Today, artificial intelligence completes these tasks within minutes it gives time back.
According to Accenture’s research, approximately 40 percent of working hours will be affected by AI technologies.
What kind of transformation will this create?
Acar believes this shift will unlock human potential.
“The real impact of artificial intelligence on business will be transforming leaders and employees from people who do the work into people who design the work.”
“Artificial intelligence is ushering in the era of the designer leader. Leaders can use this gifted time to design new business models, rethink how they develop their teams’ capabilities, and view their organizations through entirely different lenses. Over the next five years, competition will take place between those who blend artificial intelligence with human wisdom and those who use it merely for automation.”
According to PwC’s latest research, 40 percent of CEOs believe that their companies’ current business models will not survive over the next decade.
This finding highlights the urgent need for organizations to redesign their business models and ways of working and, more importantly, to ensure that employees at every level become AI-literate.
Microsoft’s Work Trend Index reveals that 78 percent of employees who use AI are already bringing their own AI tools into the workplace without waiting for official approval from their companies.
In other words, while organizations are still discussing how to integrate artificial intelligence into work, employees have already done it.
The same report indicates that more than 60 percent of employees do not have enough time for innovation.
Acar comments:
“We need to develop employees who obtain information from artificial intelligence, interpret it, enrich it with multiple perspectives, and use their time far more effectively.”
Globally, organizations are increasingly being encouraged to establish dedicated AI offices to support this transition.
According to Acar, this is also the point where boards of directors and their Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) carry significant responsibility.
Beyond guiding employees in this field, CTOs should provide concrete answers on how artificial intelligence can be effectively utilized across human resources, supply chains, business processes, procurement, and other functions.
“I strongly recommend that companies hold strategy workshops and make a deliberate effort to adapt artificial intelligence to their ways of working and thinking. They are already falling behind.”
One thing is clear: artificial intelligence is on the verge of earning a permanent seat in the boardroom.
In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2028, 90 percent of B2B purchases will be conducted by AI agents. This means that companies will increasingly need to persuade algorithms rather than people when selling products or services.
Mehmet Acar emphasizes in bold terms that, in this new reality where artificial intelligence is redefining the rules, companies must transform their organizations into horizontal networks capable of matching this unprecedented speed.
Link : https://www.forbes.com.tr/yapay-zeka/yapay-zeka-tasarimci-lider-devrini-aciyor?search=mehmet%20acar
