There’s much to explore in life, if we only dared to dive inAs usual, Yogi Berra was on to something when he said that it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
Yet sometimes the writing is on the wall for everyone to see, and for the next generation of CEOs, that writing spells out a single imperative: the need to embrace adaptability and range.
Gone are the days when betting your career on domain knowledge sufficed to steer an organization effectively, instead, leaders need to urgently embrace a broad-based approach expertise that allows them to not just break down silos, but cross-pollinate between them, or risk falling behind.
If you sense a paradox here you are not alone.
As we’ve learned from Malcolm Gladwell, putting in the famous 10,000 hours is a foundational step. Likewise, Angela Duckworth’s emphasis on grit is still relevant; commitment, dedication and doing the hard things still do matter. However, what has changed is that although deep knowledge in a core area remains essential to success, it’s no longer enough.
In Sam Altman’s year of 2025, transformative success requires not just one track of 10,000 hours, but multiple sets of them pursued in parallel. Like water flowing down a rice-terrace, the foundations of success in the coming year are built on parallel mastery across disciplines, flowing through where the opportunity to do so is the greatest.
CEOs who step out of their comfort zone and integrate insights from diverse fields stand a far better chance of thriving in a fast-changing world, and which is why the concept of range is so critical for leadership in 2025. Here’s how to cultivate it.
AI Imposes A New Reality For CEOs, One Where Range Dominates
There’s nothing particularly new about the rangification of modern work.
In fact, today’s job description already looks very different from what it did even a decade ago.
Companies now require professionals who can shuffle between marketing analytics, brand management, and digital communications on any given day; an ask that would have been unimaginable just a few decades ago.
What we once expected from several highly specialized experts now comes wrapped in a single role, reflecting a broader trend: work no longer moves in a straight line, a fact that is particularly true for CEOs.
Yes, Adam Smith’s famous pin factory still speaks important truths about efficiency, and specialization is still valuable. However, this is also where artificial intelligence comes in, changing the value equation in two pivotal ways.
First, AI makes specialized knowledge more accessible and less rare, driving down the lifetime returns to those who acquire it.
What takes an individual years to learn AI can recite in moments, and tools like large language models and Gen-AI can crunch complex data in seconds or summarize niche research that would have taken specialized teams months to unpack.
Yes, the coverage isn’t perfect today, and the quality of outputs depends on the quality of the prompts and chaining. However, I have a bridge to sell to anyone who thinks that we’ll end 2025 with anything less than AI capable of matching the expertise of seasoned, highly specialized business professionals.
Second, AI amplifies our capacity to act upon that knowledge, making every individual a potential powerhouse of execution, provided they know how to use the knowledge at their disposal.
And exactly herein lies the need for cultivating a rangeful understanding of life, business and our surroundings: if you devote 10,000 hours to digging a ten-mile hole you may well strike gold. However, you will also be oblivious to everything else that is happening just a few feet away, missing out on the opportunities afforded by embracing the adjacent possible.
For leaders, this means lifting themselves up to a vantage point that spans multiple fields. Rather than diving endlessly into one hole, CEOs must be able to prospect between potential gold mines, directing their crew where to drill next.
Because of this new reality, the role of the CEO is morphing into that of a coordinator, facilitator, and connector.
We already see shades of this in Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Cuban, who have each leveraged their core expertise to launch themselves into disparate ventures, from space exploration to pharmaceuticals.
Whether they’re boring tunnels under major cities or pivoting to AI-driven healthcare, these leaders demonstrate that success springs from capitalizing on knowledge across domains rather than from any single, deeply specialized skill.
Ultimately, the CEO’s “day job” must evolve from “I run this company” to “I am the shepherd of this enterprise.” Guiding your flock effectively demands more than just depth of expertise; it requires the kind of range that lets you discern where to graze and when to move ahead.
How Can CEOs Build Range
So how does a busy CEO intentionally cultivate range without sacrificing the benefits of focus and grit?
Contrary to popular belief, developing range doesn’t mean scattering your efforts chaotically. Being rangeful does not mean you are unfocused, or not committed.
Think of it instead as cultivating a series of intellectual weak ties, corollaries to the powerful social weak ties that drive extraordinary results. At its simplest, this means giving yourself permission to embrace short-lived dalliances with intriguing subjects, to take on side projects that may not promise immediate ROI but could spark something revolutionary down the line and to simply ‘geek out’ on a topic until inevitably moving on to something new.
Embrace the mental flip from narrow purpose to a broad intellectual passion
Recast range as an asset, not a betrayal of your core expertise.
Angela Duckworth’s concept of grit underscores the importance of sustained commitment, but if construed too narrowly, that commitment can be spread across a portfolio of interests, each contributing to your overall leadership acumen. Focus on how your primary expertise interacts with new fields you’re exploring, and venture boldly into areas you know nothing about.
That is how we learn and grow, after all.
Curate wide reading lists
Reading deeply is valuable, but reading broadly is equally important. Mix academic journals, historical narratives, biographies of pioneers, and trending thought-leadership pieces. By exposing your mind to diverse inputs, you increase your chances of making serendipitous connections that help you see the opportunities others haven’t yet.
Set yourself up for unexpected collaborations
Silos exist because we build them. Break the cycle and your bubble by committing to meet a colleague from an entirely different department or field and engage in genuine dialogue. Ask how their processes work, what their biggest challenges are, and what innovations excite them. You might discover a new tool, a new viewpoint, or a new application that slots perfectly into your domain.
Cultivate intellectual weak links by experimenting with side projects
Not everything needs to have an intrinsic ROI or a pathway to scaling to what makes you great. Take up painting or coding, enroll in an online psychology course, or learn a new language. While these pursuits might feel extraneous, they often rewire your thinking and help you see problems in fresh ways. For a CEO, this mental plasticity can be the difference between incremental improvement and groundbreaking innovation.
Adopt a ‘Topic+’ mindset
When you consider your existing skillset, be it marketing, software engineering, or economics, ask yourself: What’s the “+” component that could catapult me beyond the obvious applications? Think about the peripheral areas that feed into your domain (e.g., design thinking, data science, behavioral psychology) and devote time to learning at least the fundamentals.
Ultimately, range is a habit of intellectual curiosity coupled with targeted exposure to new ideas. You’ll never be a world-class expert in all fields, nor should you try, but cultivating a baseline level of understanding across several domains is what will allow you to on synergy and see around corners.
With AI behind your back, you might be surprised how far you can go with just the faintest idea of the first step to take.