As investment in AI accelerates, so does the risk of costly missteps. The pressure to act is real, but so is the responsibility to act with intent.
Carine Vinardi, senior executive leader, member of multiple Supervisory Boards, and a published author, has spent over 25 years at the intersection of business transformation, lean management, and leadership, helping organisations unlock sustainable performance. In her new book, Sustainable Performance in the Digital Age, she shows how leaders can combine lean principles, digital tools, and strategic insight to create performance that lasts for people, organisations, and the planet. Carine’s philosophy emphasises building on strong foundations, asking the right questions, staying curious, and using technology thoughtfully rather than chasing trends.
In the interview with Margaret Jaouadi, Carine shares her journey and the lessons behind her latest book. She explores how leaders can approach AI and digital transformation without feeling overwhelmed, prioritise meaningful initiatives over flashy tools, and cultivate resilience and empathy. Aimed at C-suite and strategic leaders, Carine offers practical guidance on integrating multicultural perspectives, activating the drivers of performance, and adopting mindset shifts, such as viewing AI as an enabler rather than a replacement, and focusing on value creation first, to thrive in the digital age.
This conversation is a reminder that sustainable performance still begins with clarity, discipline, and leadership, long before technology enters the room.
Margaret Jaouadi
Carine, you’ve spent much of your career at the intersection of business transformation, lean and leadership. Can you briefly walk us through your professional journey and what shaped your perspective on sustainable performance?
Carine Vinardi
From the very beginning of my career, activating the best drivers or enablers of performance has been the red thread of my journey. Therefore, it was naturally the red thread in my books. For me, this is not a trend of today, nor is it a fashion linked to my books or to a specific moment in my career. It has always been there. I managed this topic through a succession of operational, functional, and corporate positions, which allowed me to progress in both the shoes of those doing the work and those supporting them. Performance has been a genuine key thread throughout my career.
When it comes to sustainability, again, it was not something that became important to me because it was fashionable. Even though I was born in Paris, I grew up in a small town in the French Jura, close to the Swiss border, surrounded by nature. Respecting nature, being connected to living creatures, respecting the environment, not polluting, all of this was natural. When you grow up in such an environment, respecting your surroundings, animals and people is not something you question. In a small town, it is simply a must. I did not have to push myself to integrate these topics, even before they became widely discussed.
Looking back on my career, I started in the industry and was fortunate to begin without digital technologies. When it comes to the environment, 29 years ago, the primary concern was avoiding pollution. Energy and water consumption were not yet major topics. The focus was on not deteriorating the environment rather than on resource efficiency. Starting with this context was a gift, because it helped me understand how much we can achieve with the basics of leadership, engagement and management, all the things that are directly in your hands, without even talking about lean or other formal frameworks.
I was also fortunate to start at Moulinex, which was then fighting to survive. The company hired a team of external consultants to introduce lean. The trade unions were very present, and we were all fighting to survive. The lean I first experienced did not accept disrespecting people. That was, for me, a second gift. We were doing lean, but not the lean approach that existed at the time in some automotive contexts, where people were treated as variables. Here, respecting people was mandatory, and I had to make sure they felt good and safe with lean. For me, that is ultimately the foundation of sustainable Lean.
Another essential element at the start of my career was that I began as a frontline leader. I mention this because I have never forgotten what it means to be on the factory floor, where you need to manage everything, including delays and working without sufficient support. When you leverage all the resources provided by collective intelligence (teamwork), you can achieve unexpected high results. Facing this reality very early in my career created a consistency in my thinking that I have always kept in mind. That is why I never lose sight of the combination of all the drivers and enablers of performance, and of how to make them work together.
Later, as the internet and digital technologies emerged, my interest grew even more. The peak of my understanding of this combination came when I worked in an industrial digital company. At the same time, CSR, ESG and similar requirements were becoming more explicit. But for me, respecting nature by not wasting electricity or water was already part of how I perceived performance with my teams.
Margaret Jaouadi
You described those early experiences as gifts, a compelling way to frame your journey. What motivated you to write Sustainable Performance in the Digital Age at this particular moment? What were you noticing in the questions leaders were asking, or in their behaviours, as AI started to gain momentum? I am deliberately mentioning AI here rather than digital more broadly, because it felt as though AI suddenly brought the world to a standstill, almost as if everyone collectively gasped. What challenges do you hope this book helps leaders address?
Carine Vinardi
First of all, it was the right moment because I was transitioning. I am still transitioning. I had left my previous company, and having the luxury of time to dedicate to writing made this moment ideal.
This book came from a clear gap I saw, which also matched what my editor was looking for. Many books already exist on performance, digital transformation, AI, lean, or sustainability, sometimes in pairs, sometimes under labels like digital lean or green lean. What I wanted to do was different: to combine these dimensions and explain why they truly belong together.
My focus was not on sustainability as a constraint or a tool, but on sustainable performance that lasts over time and is sustainable for people and the planet. There are many ways to define performance, but this is the one that matters to me.
This topic did not come out of nowhere. I started writing about lean in 2013, with a first book grounded in real experience that addresses both the best and the worst of lean practice. That same logic carried over into my second book, written about ten years ago, which focused on performance in an international context. How teams work across cultures, remotely and virtually, was already central to my work very long before Covid. Performance with people and Lean remained a core foundation, combined with scientific research and practical experience.
I deepened this work through my PhD, completed in 2019, which focused on the intersection of lean and digital and how this combination creates value in international organisations. That research helped me connect these dimensions more rigorously.
By 2022, I realised that one crucial piece was still missing: performance at the strategic level. I have more than 10 years of experience on group steering committees and several years as a board member. From that vantage point, it became clear that efficient strategy design and execution were far from obvious and often much weaker than expected. My third book, published in 2023, fills that gap while still integrating lean, digital, and multicultural dimensions.
In 2024, with the success of this book, I had a very concrete experience with AI when my editor proposed using it to translate from English to German. The result was technically correct, but stylistically wrong and culturally inaccurate. It clearly showed both the power and the limits of AI, reinforcing my conviction that technology supports expertise but does not replace it.
That experience strengthened the logic of Sustainable Performance in the Digital Age. Digital (and AI as part of it) are essential today, but the book is not about chasing tools. It is about helping leaders make the right choices with what exists now, while building a way of thinking that will remain relevant as technologies continue to evolve.
This book is the result of a long journey grounded in practice and experience, supported by academic research, and focused on integration rather than the latest buzz. It is about combining what we already know in a way that enables sustainable performance, today and in the future.
Margaret Jaouadi
From our conversations, what really comes through is a mindset of curiosity and a willingness to go deeper. You are not advocating wiping the slate clean or starting from scratch. Instead, you see digital and AI as additional layers and tools that can help us achieve our goals. That is how I understand your perspective. In your own words, what challenges do you hope this book helps leaders address, especially those who are currently struggling?
Carine Vinardi
Many leaders are struggling to get their heads around all of this. Even without mentioning age, the average age of C-suite leaders is relatively high. Not every leader demonstrates curiosity, and some are even dismissive, saying it’s just another passing trend that will come and go.
What I hope the book provides is guidance. Through the research for the book and all the people I spoke with, I tried to play the role of a guide, just as others have guided me in the past and will guide me in the future. When you are curious, you can always find people or paths that help guide you. That was very important for me.
Every reader is different, so each will find their own way to benefit from the book. There is no single path. One key point I make is that, except for the big digital technology companies, most organisations are not in the same situation. Those large technology companies spend trillions making digital their core objective. It is essential to understand that they are also the ones strongly suggesting that if you do not adopt digital or AI, you will lose momentum or become irrelevant. This strategy is part of their business model. They want to sell digital solutions. As leaders, we need to take a step back from that message.
What is interesting from an academic perspective, including research from institutions like MIT, is that the reality is more nuanced. Researchers are closely examining how many jobs could be replaced and how much productivity digital and AI technologies can truly generate. You will find in my book that scientific data show the impact is not as significant as often presented. There is a big difference between what can be digitalised and what truly makes sense to digitalise, especially when you consider investment, cost, value and context.
We have seen this before. When robots and automation first appeared, we were told they would be everywhere and replace everyone. Today, robots are present in our lives, but not everywhere. It is not because robots cannot replace many tasks. It is because there is a gap between what can be automated and what actually should be automated. The same applies to digital and AI.
MIT research illustrates this clearly. If you look at job content in the United States, around 20 per cent of tasks could be digitalised. But when you look at what truly makes sense, particularly from a financial perspective, that number drops to a few per cent or even less. This difference is crucial.
I am not saying leaders should deny themselves opportunities. But if you are curious and look beyond what major technology companies communicate, including academic and scientific articles that are often freely available, you can significantly reduce the pressure. Even institutions like MIT acknowledge the size of this gap. As a leader, you need to step back, not rush, and focus on activating the right levers.
Personally, I use generative AI tools like ChatGPT and similar tools. But I take a step back and ask myself which type of generative AI to use, for what purpose, and why. That reflection alone reduces pressure. Another way to reduce pressure is to start from the customer. Ask what value you are really creating, how digital supports that value, what you can reasonably expect from your people, and what actually generates economic value.
When you do this, you often realise that there is a lot to improve before going digital first. One cannot simply plug digital into processes that are not already optimised. Especially in industrial environments, digital is rarely the primary driver of performance. It is an additional source of performance, not the foundation.
Toyota is a good illustration. It has always been a lean and highly advanced robotics company. Even today, Toyota does not step back from lean. That foundation is what makes it strong. As a leader, if you step back and ask what you can already do without digital, you will realise that you can do a lot. Many leaders already have good recipes in place.
The recipes that truly make sense, and that you can clearly explain to your people, are the ones that will be successful. There will always be someone telling you that you could do more with digital. But you never have the money to do everything, and neither do your competitors.
I do not pretend to remove pressure for everyone, but I have learned to reduce it for myself. In my last company, I had to face boards and stakeholders asking why we were doing some things and not others. As a leader, especially a C-level leader, you need to be ready to explain your choices. That is what strategy is. Strategy is about making choices. You do some things, and you deliberately do not do others.
Digital follows the same logic. You must be clear about what you choose to do and why you are not doing everything. You need to be comfortable explaining that. Otherwise, you get lost in endless possibilities, and the pressure only increases.
Margaret Jaouadi
When leaders feel pressure to do something with AI, what are the most critical questions they should ask themselves before introducing digital or AI into their organisations?
Carine Vinardi
The first question is whether you have already activated the basic layers of performance in your organisation. Have you fully leveraged the free enablers and drivers of performance? Do you still see room for improvement in engagement based on your engagement survey results? Do you have the right KPIs? Do you have the basics of performance in place, such as problem-solving and other fundamental practices that every company needs, regardless of its industry?
If the answer is yes, you can of course take the next step. You do not need to be outstanding in performance without digital, but without this foundation, these basics of performance management, you cannot build digital on top of it. For me, this is the key point. Before introducing digital properly, you need to understand your level of maturity in processes, organisation and management without digital. Digital only works if you are clear about where you stand and honest with yourself.
I have met many leaders who say they already know lean. Most of the time, this means they tried lean, then stopped, then restarted. And this is just one example. If you are not at 60 or 70 per cent satisfaction in an engagement survey, you still have room for improvement in alignment, coordination and consistency across the organisation. I would work on these topics first and make sure that your fundamentals are solid.
From a motivation perspective, it is also imperative to understand that you are not starting from zero. Senior leaders and executives already have many performance drivers in their hands, independent of digital. The question is whether you have activated them, whether you can do it better, and whether you can do more. In most cases, the answer is yes, even before introducing digital.
The customer is also a key point. When you deploy digital, the first question should be whether it helps you deliver more value to the customer or to your employees. In my book, many people talk about digital for customers. One case study describes the introduction of a chatbot. In the end, the company realised that customers still needed to contact a real person. As long as the chatbot cannot answer as well as a human, there is an issue. You end up needing both the chatbot and someone online, and this creates complexity rather than value.
The real challenge is what kind of digital self-service truly makes sense? We all understand that sometimes it is helpful to upload a document or complete a task online before speaking to someone. But we have all also experienced frustrating chatbot situations. Customer value is absolutely central. Digital can create significant value for customers, but it can also destroy value if it causes frustration, especially when the digital solution fails to deliver what it promises.
Margaret Jaouadi
There is another point that may or may not be relevant here. In some cases, I understand why organisations deploy these tools. If chatbots handle even 20 per cent of customer queries, and the remaining 80 per cent are passed on to a human in customer service, that already represents a meaningful gain.
Carine Vinardi
Yes, but in that case, you need to be very clear about what you are building. You should design something that effectively addresses 20 per cent of basic needs, without pretending it can solve the remaining 80 per cent. That clarity is essential unless you want to frustrate 80% of your customers.
The right approach to deploy such tools is to progress step by step, rather than trying to build something that does everything and ends up doing nothing well. I have heard, for example, that some new chatbots can detect a user’s frustration in their tone of voice and immediately connect them to a human, rather than keeping them stuck in the system. There is clearly room for improvement.
Personally, I am not against chatbots, and I think most people feel the same, as long as they answer my questions efficiently and without wasting my time. The problem starts when you go through a chatbot and still end up having to contact a human afterwards. In that case, the customer loses time. A company should never allow a situation where digital tools increase customer effort rather than reduce it.
Margaret Jaouadi
From your experience, what are the most common pitfalls organisations encounter when introducing digital technologies at scale?
Carine Vinardi
I will try to answer this in a structured way, starting with the why. The first major pitfall is fear. Fear of missing out (FOMO) and fear of becoming obsolete (FOBO). This fear is powerful, especially at the top of organisations. Leaders are often pushed by their peers and told that if they have not done this or that, they are already late. One of the biggest pitfalls is acting under this pressure. You need to resist it and be very clear about why you are doing what you are doing.
The WHY is critical because you need to be able to explain it to your employees. I insist on this in my book. Do not lie to your people. I have heard this many times, through interviews and experience: leaders focusing on digital to help them increase productivity and replace people. Do not assume your people will not understand this. They will. If your digital strategy’s goal is mainly to reduce headcount, it is the same story we saw with poorly deployed lean initiatives.
When lean was deployed with only cost and productivity in mind, while pretending it was for customers or for people, it failed. It is still the case today. People are smart, and they quickly understand the real intent, so the why must be honest.
There are cases where replacing people can make sense, and the why can be clearly explained. I will give you a concrete example from a plant in my previous company. There was a job that was extremely physically demanding; we could even say it was painful. However, we could not sufficiently improve the ergonomics. We were constantly hiring temporary workers who would leave after a few weeks. In this case, we introduced a cobot. It helped us improve productivity, and yes, it replaced a position. But we were transparent. We explained clearly why we were doing it. The task involved lifting boxes and stacking them on pallets, and there was no economically viable way to make the job less painful. People supported the decision because it was not a position anyone wanted to keep. In that situation, replacing the task with a cobot made sense, and people agreed. That is an example of why that works.
Where it does not work is when people are doing their jobs well, and digital is introduced mainly as a hidden cost-cutting exercise. In my experience, many organisations try to disguise cost- and productivity-driven decisions, and it does not work. It did not work with lean in the past, and it does not work with digital today. You may achieve short-term savings, but in the long term, you will kill your digital strategy.
The second pitfall is the WHAT. You can digitalise many things, just as you can automate many things, including waste. Wastes need to be identified and removed, ideally not digitalised. In addition, you must decide what truly makes sense to be digitalised. You need clear priorities for your organisation. What makes sense to you may not make sense to your competitors or to another company. If you do not clarify what you are trying to do, you end up trying to do everything, and nothing really works.
Closely linked to this is the tendency to start too big. If you try to deploy digital everywhere at once, you create complexity and resistance. Starting smaller and learning step by step is far more effective. This logic already existed in lean thinking, and it applies just as much to digital.
After the what, another pitfall I would like to mention is around the HOW. Digital cannot be deployed by one function alone. It cannot work without IT, but it also cannot work without finance, operations and other functions. In many companies, teamwork at the leadership level remains a low priority. Today, with challenges like sustainability and digital transformation, this is more critical than ever. CEOs and top leaders must be able to make their teams work together.
If leaders continue to manage in silos, digital initiatives will fail. Some degree of centralisation is often required, especially for IT, cybersecurity and data protection. Highly decentralised organisations sometimes struggle with this. You cannot build everything independently. High-level alignment is necessary.
A last pitfall I will highlight is the HOW of DATA MANAGEMENT. Many companies rush into digital initiatives without having robust data management in place. Digital relies on how data is structured, organised and governed. If your data foundation is weak, your digital initiatives will be weak as well.
Today, it is easy to put data into the cloud, but that does not mean it is beneficial or sustainable. To build something efficient and sustainable, you need to eliminate dark data, data that has no real value, no use. This approach matters for environmental sustainability as well as for performance and efficiency.
These are some of the most common pitfalls I see. There are many more, of course, but these are the ones that come up most frequently.
Margaret Jaouadi
That is absolutely right. Earlier, we also discussed what you described as digital waste. The idea is not to create digital waste, but to build on the right foundations. If a lean approach or another improvement method can eliminate a process, there is no reason to digitise it. Digitising a removable process creates digital waste.
Carine Vinardi
Exactly. And this is where the role of leaders is essential. It is the leader’s responsibility to ask the right questions when someone proposes a digital solution. Ideas can come from anywhere, including the factory floor, and many of them are good ideas. But when someone suggests digitising something, leaders need to pause and ask simple questions. Why are we doing this? Can we do it without digital? What is the added value?
These fundamental questions help clarify whether digital is really the correct answer. When you ask them consistently, it becomes clear whether a digital solution makes sense or whether the underlying process should be simplified or eliminated first. Developing the ability to ask the right questions is a core part of a leader’s role.
Margaret Jaouadi
What skills and organisational capabilities do leaders need to develop to support sustainable performance and long-term growth in the digital age?
Carine Vinardi
I may surprise you, but the first capability I would mention is not new at all. It is teamwork. More than ever, with everything that is coming, no one can master everything. Leaders need to rely on different forms of expertise and experience across the organisation.
The real challenge arises when leaders cannot coordinate and align these different perspectives. This issue is not new, but it remains a central responsibility of top leaders, and of leaders at all levels. Even if your own manager does not do this well, it does not prevent you from doing it within your own team. For me, supporting sustainable performance means activating the potential around you and addressing multiple topics together. Teamwork is more important than ever.
The second capability I would highlight is robustness and resilience. I separate the two because both address related but slightly different dimensions. Robustness is about creating room for manoeuvre in your organisation. It is about designing processes and systems that enable you to adapt and remain flexible in the face of uncertainty. Uncertainty is not new, but it is occurring more frequently. You need robust processes that can absorb different types of uncertainty.
Resilience is closely connected; it is more about how you respond when a crisis or a harrowing situation occurs. It relates to high-impact uncertainty and shock situations. Developing resilience at the organisational, process, and people levels is essential. With robustness and resilience, you can face almost anything.
The third capability, and one that has helped me personally a great deal, is curiosity. In today’s world, leaders need to learn continuously. They need to be curious enough to understand, question, and step back. I have met people who started their careers with lean and who still only talk about lean today. Some of them almost refuse digital. They argue that you can already do so much with lean, and in a way, they are not wrong. You can do a lot with lean.
But for me, the question has always been whether lean is the only answer. Lean was one of the first areas of expertise I developed, but I never stopped questioning it. I asked myself how digital could support my lean practice. Do I really need to replace a whiteboard with a digital screen? What is better, and what is worse? These are questions you can only ask if you remain curious.
We now have access to so much information that if you do not cultivate curiosity, if you do not allow yourself to change what you know, to doubt and to step back, it becomes challenging. We do not know what will happen in the next ten years. What we can do is stay curious enough to anticipate and to adapt.
I will give you a personal example. I started reading about emotional intelligence in 1997. At that time, very few people were interested in it. It was the year Daniel Goleman published his book. I was working at Moulinex, a company facing serious challenges, and I realised that in times of crisis, the ability to rely on people was critical. Goleman was writing about empathy, about connecting with people, and about how leaders can develop these capabilities in their daily professional lives.
I read about emotional intelligence long before it became fashionable. I did not wait for it to be a trend. I was curious enough to ask myself whether my intuition was correct. That is what leaders need to do. Academic research supports this as well. For decades, studies have said that the leader of the future will be empathetic. We have been saying this for 40 years, and yet truly empathic leadership is still not widespread.
Rather than repeating that empathy will be necessary, leaders need to be curious enough to understand how empathy can actually help them. That is why curiosity and the ability to go beyond surface-level understanding are so important. I read a lot, even more today than before. I read at least two books per month, in addition to articles and magazines. I read not because I have to, but because it allows me to connect ideas, build understanding and form my own informed opinions.
Margaret Jaouadi
Yes, that is precisely what I try to teach my sons, and what I also try to practise myself. It is important to have varied reference points. Nowadays, it’s easy to learn all the news, opinions and information from a single source. People need to stay curious and seek out different perspectives, even by listening to views they strongly disagree with. There is always something to learn. It is not about convincing each other who is right or wrong, but about listening and keeping an open mind.
Carine Vinardi
You are touching on an essential point: the value of reading and engaging with opposing opinions. I will give you a personal example. I am lucky to have flown in business class. When newspapers were available on flights, I would always read both Le Figaro and L’Humanité, two French newspapers that often represent opposing viewpoints.
Sometimes, when I opened L’Humanité in a business context, people would look at me and wonder why I was reading it. But for me, it was essential. The way people think and express their views matters. If you only read information that confirms what you already believe, you reinforce your own biases. This confirmation bias is one of the biggest traps.
The single-source approach is even more problematic today, given AI and social networks. These systems tend to feed you information that aligns with what you already search for, read or like. They continuously confirm your existing views. You need to escape from that consciously. Yes, it requires effort and energy, but it is the only way to think critically and remain open-minded.
Margaret Jaouadi
If you could leave senior leaders with one mindset shift from your research, what would it be for leading AI-enabled transformation in a sustainable way?
Carine Vinardi
I have spoken about this in my book and in several LinkedIn posts, but I would summarise it around two key principles.
First, use AI for what it does better than humans: processing large volumes of data. There are many fields where AI clearly outperforms humans, and in those cases, it is easy to justify.
The second principle is to use AI for tasks that humans do not want to do. Instead of asking whether AI can create a piece of music or generate creative content, the real question should be whether this is what we want to automate first. Do we want to replace what people enjoy doing, or what they find meaningful, or should we start with what is boring, repetitive or makes little sense to do manually?
For me, the priority is clear. Use AI for what it does better and for what is truly tedious. If you do that, you also create a strong and credible narrative. People will rarely oppose an initiative that removes meaningless or exhausting tasks from their jobs. They may complain at first, but they quickly understand the value.
By contrast, you should avoid using AI in areas where the human dimension is essential. Anything that requires human connection, empathy, judgment, conversation, or relationship building should remain human-led. These are areas where AI cannot and should not replace people.
Of course, AI can support creative work by providing suggestions or inspiration, primarily when used as an additional tool rather than a replacement. But AI does not truly create. It proposes. And those proposals are always based on existing data, often your own data. Even when AI appears to generate something new, it is recombining what already exists and offering directions you may not have explored yet. The human remains central.
Based on my experience and research, the conclusion is consistent. The key is careful selection. Leaders must be very deliberate about what they choose to automate, based on what AI does better than humans and on what they can clearly and honestly explain to their people in a way that makes sense.
Margaret Jaouadi
Is there anything else you would like to add to conclude our discussion?
Carine Vinardi
To conclude, I would like to come back to a broader point about transformation.
Transformation is always demanding, especially when it is not something we have consciously chosen. It is the same for all of us. We did not choose to live in a world where we must urgently address environmental and sustainability challenges. We should have acted earlier, and now these constraints feel heavy. But constraints can also be compelling. They can be a strong driver for creativity and innovation.
There is a well-known idea from Taiichi Ohno, one of the fathers of the Toyota Production System: necessity is the mother of creativity. When you have constraints and no easy way out, you find solutions. In that sense, the digital transition combined with sustainability requirements is not only a burden. It is also a unique opportunity to focus on what really matters and to work on the right problems.
And this connects to something fundamental: we are not starting from scratch.
To illustrate this, I like to use everyday examples. Think about great chefs, musicians, or top athletes. Do you think a chef forgets how to make a basic mayonnaise? Of course not. They build on fundamentals. Musicians build on notes and scales. Tennis players never forget the basic movements of returning the ball. Excellence requires strong foundations.
Digital transformation is precisely the same. When we deploy digital or AI technologies, we should not assume we must reinvent everything from scratch. We build on what already exists: proven practices, solid processes, and accumulated experience. The real risk is forgetting these fundamentals.
Without strong foundations, you will not perform miracles with AI.
Some people tell me they use generative AI or tools like ChatGPT to cook, to follow recipes, or to learn new skills. Yes, it can help. It is a bit like opening a cookbook or watching a video. But a video will never give you the intuition, the gestures, or the subtle tips of a real chef. And you cannot become a chef by tips alone.
More than 70% of knowledge is tacit. It is not written, formalised, or easily transferable. It comes from experience, mentoring, interaction, and practice. That is why not everyone becomes a great musician, athlete, or leader, even though books, videos and digital tools are widely available.
Digital and AI can support us, accelerate learning, and open new possibilities. But they do not replace fundamentals, human experience, or deep expertise. If we keep that in mind, we can combine the best of what we already know with the power of new technologies, and that is where sustainable performance truly comes from.
Carine Vinardi’s book Sustainable Performance in the Digital Age – When Lean Meets Digital is available for purchase directly from the publisher via this link (Get 20% off with this code SPRAUT): https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-01252-4 or from Amazon.
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