Artificial intelligence has transformed industries — yet, according to Dr. Saleem Mistry, Associate Professor of Management at the University of Delaware’s Alfred Lerner College of Business & Economics, its most overlooked potential lies in helping leaders themselves think more clearly and decide more effectively.
Dr. Mistry focuses on enabling leaders to be more productive, think clearly, and make better decisions.
Focusing on the Leader, Not Just the Organization
Dr. Mistry’s work examines how leaders at every level — from executives to first-line supervisors — can use AI to enhance productivity and decision-making. While most organizational conversations about AI focus on operational efficiency or customer service, he argues that the true frontier is leadership productivity.
“Leadership productivity directly shapes organizational performance,” he explains. “AI can be transformative when it helps leaders think faster, decide better, and regain the time they’ve lost to administration.”
What Inspired This Line of Inquiry
As a professor of management and leadership, Dr. Mistry is often asked how AI will change the workplace. Those conversations usually revolve around automating workflows, not empowering leaders. Yet, as he notes, an MIT report found that 95 percent of generative AI pilots are failing — largely due to the absence of clear business use cases.
That insight shaped his direction: leadership itself may be the missing use case. Having spent much of his earlier career in high technology, Mistry saw firsthand that innovation succeeds or fails based on how effectively leaders model new tools.
“Leadership productivity directly shapes organizational performance,” Mistry explains. “AI can be transformative if it’s applied thoughtfully and ethically — especially when it helps leaders think more clearly and act more decisively.”
Dr. Mistry’s research focuses on the future of work, with a particular emphasis on how individuals navigate workplace transitions. His research explores how people adjust to both minor and major changes in their careers, such as shifts in jobs, responsibilities, teams, or entire organizations. A growing area of his expertise is the strategic use of artificial intelligence to enhance productivity for leaders, teams, and human resource professionals. His research connects academic insights with practical applications, helping to shape how people and organizations adapt to an evolving professional landscape.
View his profile here
Demonstrating practical applications
To validate his ideas, Dr. Mistry created a database of leadership use cases derived from 2024–2025 U.S. Office of Inspector General (OIG) reports published on Oversight.gov. He analyzed each leadership challenge using three guiding questions:
- Do the problems stem from leaders struggling with time, decisions, or task management?
- How might AI help?
- Where could AI have the greatest impact?
This process produced a structured set of AI-productivity scenarios for leadership at three levels:
- Executive Example (Amtrak): AI could power a real-time RACI dashboard to clarify accountability, track decisions, and eliminate bottlenecks.
- Mid-Level Example (EPA): “Agentic AI” could cross-check allegations against verified data before termination decisions, preventing ethical and legal missteps.
- Supervisor Example (CISA): AI could scan incentive data for waste and anomalies, saving hours of manual review.
These examples form what Mistry calls “the first leadership use-case library” — a framework showing precisely where AI can improve decision quality, speed, and fairness across public-sector management.
Addressing the Leadership Bottleneck: Middle Managers
Dr. Mistry’s recent collaboration with Steven Fields expands this lens to the organizational middle — where, as their paper “Middle Managers Are Drowning in Decisions” reveals, decision overload has become both a productivity and mental-health crisis.
Research cited in that paper shows that nearly 70 percent of middle managers say their decision-making process is broken, while almost half report being overwhelmed by delegated or cross-cutting choices. The emotional toll is real: decision overload correlates strongly with workplace anxiety and burnout.
Their proposed solution — Agentic AI — acts as a policy-literate assistant that checks data, interprets rules, and presents evidence-based recommendations.
“Agentic AI doesn’t replace human judgment,” Mistry notes. “It gives leaders what they lack — clarity, control, and confidence.”
Why It Matters
By automating repetitive, data-heavy tasks, AI gives leaders something they desperately need: time. Time to think strategically, coach teams, and make better decisions. Mistry’s findings link AI adoption directly to mental well-being, arguing that improved decision productivity leads to improved organizational health.
“Decision productivity is business productivity,” he says. “Organizations that make faster, fairer, and more informed decisions outperform those that don’t.”
Next Steps: Building the Framework for Responsible AI Leadership
Dr. Mistry’s next milestone is to develop a structured set of leadership use cases that can be used by business leaders at all levels where AI can deliver the greatest measurable impact. He is also developing frameworks for responsible AI adoption that help leaders determine when and how to deploy these tools ethically — across decision-making, communication, planning, and task management.
He welcomes partnerships with organizations, leadership institutes, and technology groups eager to explore how AI can elevate executive and managerial effectiveness.
“AI won’t replace leaders,” Mistry concludes, “but leaders who learn to use AI effectively will outperform those who don’t.”
