Jack Myers has been a fixture in the media and marketing world for five decades. As founder of MediaVillage and AdvancingDiversity.org, he has advised Fortune 500 advertisers, built education programs for the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and celebrated over 50 corporations through the Advancing Diversity Hall of Honors. Yet Myers’ newest work, The Tao of Leadership: Harmonizing Technological Innovation and Human Creativity, takes a deliberate step beyond his media roots. It offers a holistic playbook for executives who must steer organizations through the breakneck acceleration of artificial intelligence.
“The subtitle says it all—Harmonizing technological innovation with human creativity.”
—Jack Myers
Myers frames the book around five Taoist values—harmony, balance, stability, flexibility, and integrity—arguing that these millennia‑old concepts are precisely what today’s AI era demands.
From Peter Drucker’s Assembly Line to a Flow‑Based Enterprise
A central provocation in the book is Myers’ assertion that the 20th‑century corporate blueprint, codified in Peter Drucker’s post‑WWII writings on General Motors, has become “a death knell” for any company that clings to it. In his view, hierarchies and profit‑and‑loss silos cannot keep pace with exponential technology. At the Team Flow Institute, we agree wholeheartedly and are grateful for this important guidance at this crucial moment in history.
“Technology is advancing too quickly. By the time you build a bridge to adapt, the destination has moved. Don’t build bridges – build portals.”
Instead, leaders must pivot from rigid structures to what Myers calls Fusion Flow. The idea is simple in theory and deceptively hard in practice:
- Fuse any redundant functions under a single set of principles.
- Flow around obstacles like water carves fresh channels as it slips past a boulder.
Fusion Flow requires centralizing data, breaking down walls between departments, and giving teams a shared purpose against which they can continuously adapt. This approach is a natural companion to Team Flow, encouraging leaders to align their people around a Collective Ambition intrinsically.
Harmony: The New Metric of Competitive Fitness
While all five Taoist values are recognized as important, Myers singles out harmony as the glue that binds human talent and machine intelligence.
“Success requires a harmonious integration of creativity and technology, leveraging the unique strengths of both.”
In operational terms, harmony means:
- Human‑first AI design – Use automation to strip drudgery while preserving human ingenuity.
- Transparent education – Replace fears of replacement with pathways to up‑skilling.
- Ethical governance – Teach AI the organization’s values as deliberately as any new employee.
When harmony is achieved, psychological safety rises, experimentation accelerates, and organizations can pivot without fracturing trust.
Investing in AI and Humans
Myers is blunt about the dual mandate facing executives:
“If a leader isn’t investing heavily in AI and in the human response to that investment, they should be replaced immediately.”
He notes that some industries, particularly legacy media, are still “playing catch‑up,” whereas firms like Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple have long paired aggressive tech R&D with robust learning cultures. Those who neglect the human side of AI adoption, Myers warns, risk repeating the failures of earlier digital transformations that stalled because people were treated as afterthoughts.
The Dividend from Psychological Safety
Fear of “training one’s replacement” is now a top barrier to AI usage among rank‑and‑file employees. Myers argues that the antidote is constant communication and education:
- Clarify the corporate AI strategy so everyone understands where the technology is headed.
- Invest in creativity, intuition, and ethics training—the uniquely human skills AI amplifies but cannot replicate.
- Measure well‑being and collaboration as rigorously as revenue.
These moves, he says, create the psychological safety necessary for teams to experiment, fail safely, and innovate at AI speed.
Preparing for the Nexus Generation
Looking farther ahead, Myers introduces a cohort he calls the Nexus Generation – children born after 2020 who will grow up with generative AI as an integral collaboration tool, much as Gen Z grew up digital‑native. He suggests that boards that ignore this upcoming workforce will be out‑maneuvered by firms that embed AI literacy into every level of their talent pipeline.
Myers believes the window for action is narrow:
“Failure used to be slow. Today it’s fast. Within 24 to 36 months, boards will realize many current leaders simply aren’t prepared.”
He predicts two paths: organizations that centralize, integrate, and turn values into operating systems, or those that continue incremental tweaks and face sharp decline.
For modern leaders, Myers offers an approach that closely aligns with our work at the Team Flow Institute.
- Re‑architect for Fusion Flow. Map redundancies, merge silos, and align teams under unified objectives.
- Adopt the Five Taoist Values. Use harmony, balance, stability, flexibility, and integrity as decision filters.
- Invest in Human‑Centric AI. Budget equally for technology deployment and employee education.
- Cultivate Psychological Safety. Make learning the default, failure non‑punitive, and well‑being visible.
- Measure Flow as Strategy. Track engagement, innovation velocity, and cross‑team collaboration alongside financial KPIs.
Bottom Line
In a business landscape hurtling toward AI‑driven reinvention, Jack Myers insists that the oldest wisdom remains the most relevant: align with the natural flow, honor human ingenuity, and treat harmony not as a soft virtue but as the sharpest strategic edge.
Where to Learn More
The Tao of Leadership is available on Amazon and major booksellers. Additional resources, including white papers on Fusion Flow, can be found at MyersReports.com, while daily thought leadership on inclusive media and marketing appears at MediaVillage.org.
For organizations ready to harmonize technology with human creativity, Myers offers advisory services and keynote programs tailored to C‑suite and board audiences.
