Writing your next chapter with AI: Lessons in liminal leadership from Katja Schipperheijn

The conversation around AI often starts with technology. Did you test this new AI tool? Have you checked this new agentic capability? Are you aware of this new risk? But for the marketing leaders we work with through Empathy Lab, the questions run deeper than tech. As EPAM continues its evolution as an AI-native company, we're seeing leaders grapple with something bigger than adoption. How do you make decisions when the ground keeps shifting? How do you lead through uncertainty? And what does growth look like when change becomes a constant?

Those questions brought us to Mix Brussels for the first edition of Next Chapter: a breakfast for women leaders in marketing looking to write their next chapter with AI.

Our guest was futurist, researcher and author Katja Schipperheijn, whose work on learning, leadership and emerging technology has influenced organizations around the world. Drawing on the ideas behind her book The Learning Mindset, she challenged attendees to look beyond the technology itself with an exclusive preview of her models in the new edition of Learning Ecosystems. 

The real question, she argued, isn't how quickly AI is changing. According to her, the question is whether we are learning quickly enough to lead through it. So… are we?

Welcome to the liminal space

Katja describes today's moment as one of perpetual liminality: a state of being permanently "in-between." This means that the strategies that worked yesterday no longer guarantee success tomorrow. At the same time, the future remains uncertain. There is no clear endpoint, no stable destination to plan toward. Leaders are expected to navigate constant transition rather than manage occasional change.

For marketers, the reality she described feels familiar. New AI capabilities emerge almost weekly. Consumer expectations shift rapidly. Organizational structures struggle to keep up. In many cases, they're no longer managing change, they’re operating inside it.

“We're not moving towards a new normal. We're learning to operate without one.”
Katja Schipperheijn , Executive advisor, author, keynote speaker, and founder of Habit of Improvement and the Learning Mindset Organization

According to Katja, succeeding in this environment requires more than resilience. It requires a new mindset. Not just a growth mindset, but a learning mindset.

Yes, many leaders are familiar with the idea of a growth mindset (believing that abilities can be developed through effort and practice). Katja pushed the concept further: growth comes from learning. Developing a learning mindset is not simply believing that change is possible, but actively engaging with it instead. That means experimenting, reflecting, adapting and remaining curious even when certainty disappears.

Her message was clear: in an era defined by accelerated technological change, the ability to continuously learn may become more important than any specific technical skill. It’s a simple (but difficult) mental shift. Instead of asking "Do I understand this yet?" ask "What can I learn next?"

Why imagination may be leadership's most underrated skill

Perhaps the most surprising idea from the session was Katja’s emphasis on imagination. In business, imagination often gets positioned as a nice-to-have. Something that belongs to designers, writers or innovators. But what if imagination is a prerequisite for leadership? After all, every strategy starts as an imagined future. Every innovation starts as an imagined possibility. Every meaningful change begins with someone's ability to see something that doesn't exist yet.

“If you don't imagine the future, you won't see it coming.”
Katja Schipperheijn , Executive advisor, author, keynote speaker, and founder of Habit of Improvement and the Learning Mindset Organization

It's a deceptively simple statement. In a business environment obsessed with optimization and execution, imagination can sound soft. Yet her argument was anything but. Leaders need the ability to envision possibilities before they become obvious. To imagine different futures. To recognize emerging patterns before competitors do. Without imagination, organizations become reactive. With it, they gain the ability to shape what's next.

The human competencies AI can't replace
Throughout the session, Katja painted a vivid picture of technologies already moving from science fiction into reality: AI assistants, wearable and brain computer interfaces, cognitive cities, emerging forms of human-machine interaction and even commercial data centers that use actual brain cells or Wetware as a Service.

The takeaway for our audience was not technological determinism. Actually, I would argue it was the opposite. As technology becomes more powerful, uniquely human competencies become more valuable. She highlighted eight competencies that leaders should actively cultivate:

• Curiosity and the habit of asking "why"
  Imagination
• Openness to new ideas.
• Optimism as the driver for resilience and wellbeing
• Realism to encourage experimentation and learning from mistakes
• Resilience in the face of uncertainty
• Empathy and self-awareness
• The ability to connect ideas across disciplines (Katja’s calls this consilience)

Together, these form the foundation of what she calls liminal leadership based on human wisdom (or phronesis): the ability to guide people through uncertainty without pretending to have all the answers.

Empathy starts with self-empathy

For Empathy Lab, one message resonated particularly strongly. Katja challenged attendees to rethink empathy itself. Leadership empathy, she argued, is not simply kindness or compassion. It begins with understanding. Understanding others, certainly, but also understanding ourselves.

Many leaders struggle with anxiety, imposter syndrome, or fear of failure when confronted with rapid change. Left unchecked, those feelings can affect how teams perceive and respond to leadership. "People can sense your frustration," she noted. The implication is profound: before we can help others navigate uncertainty, we must first understand our own relationship with it and learn to manage our own emotions.

Leading learners, not followers

Towards the end of the session, Katja left the room with a challenge: marketing leaders have an opportunity to become something more – learning leaders.

“In a world where knowledge expires faster than ever, learning becomes our most durable advantage.”
Katja Schipperheijn, Executive advisor, author, keynote speaker, and founder of Habit of Improvement and the Learning Mindset Organization

You want to be a leader? Then accept you no longer have all the answers. Your job is to create the conditions where people can keep learning together. So, her challenge for the women leaders in the room was clear: do not become a leader who simply embraces AI tools. The world needs leaders who create cultures where continuous learning becomes normal. Where curiosity is rewarded. Where diverse perspectives are welcomed and questioning assumptions are encouraged.

One question from Katja Schipperheijn to you

Katja closed her session with a simple question. Not “what will you do next quarter?”, not “what will your strategy look like three years from now?” She asked: What will you do differently tomorrow?

In a world that increasingly rewards adaptability over certainty, perhaps that's the most practical leadership question of all. Because liminal leaders don’t try to predict the future as if they had a mystical crystal ball to gaze into. No, liminal leaders stay curious enough to meet whatever comes their way. They are curious, they are open, and they use their imagination as a tool to gain a competitive advantage.