Cast your mind back to February 2020.

The world, in hindsight, was perched on the edge of something seismic. But it didn’t feel that way. Markets were humming. Kids were in school. We were shaking hands, booking flights, and blowing out birthday candles. A few buried headlines about a faraway virus felt distant and abstract. And then - within weeks, and then hours - offices closed, schools shut down - and just like that, everything changed.

A recent article by AI founder Matt Shumer suggests we may be in a similar moment again. Only this time, the contagion isn’t viral. It’s artificial. His argument is simple - and unsettling: AI has crossed a threshold.

The core message is this: the upside is staggering, the downside sobering and the future already here. It just hasn’t knocked on everyone’s door yet - but you can hear it coming.

Well, it has knocked on ours. And I answered. Claude, Otter, Copilot, like so many trick-or-treaters looking for candy, or in this case, ready to take whatever you’re willing to hand over. There was a moment where I considered quietly backing away and pretending I wasn’t home. But curiosity got the better of me.

And while what I found on the other side was undeniably impressive—polished, efficient, and remarkably capable—it also left me with a few questions.

Standing there, looking at what was in front of me, I got to thinking about what this might mean for our humble enterprise—and the very human undertaking of executive search.

I’ve long believed that “Executive Search” is a bit of a misnomer. The search part—at least in its traditional sense—was commoditized years ago. Gone are the days of Michael Honey, a truly patriarchal figure in Western Canadian executive search, and one of my early mentors, sitting on an old rolling library stool, a hunched silhouette in the cornfield maze of hand-cranked shelving systems, thumbing through paper files and printed resumes in search of possibility.

 Even then, the shift was underway with tools like LinkedIn and recruitment-specific CRMs and customizable databases. Today, AI can now map entire talent markets in seconds. The Rolodex, once guarded and hard-earned, now belongs to everyone. Information is abundant. Access is universal. The library stool and mobile shelving units, relics of a different era, now feel more like hieroglyphics scratched on a cave wall—faint reminders of how the work was once done.

So if AI can identify candidates faster, summarize backgrounds better, and even draft outreach that sounds suspiciously like something we’d write… what exactly is left?

Quite a lot, actually.

Because as I’ve said for years, the real work was never the search. It was the judgment. It’s the moment across the table when you ask a question that isn’t in the spec—and then sit in the silence that follows. It’s how someone talks about failure. The difference between confidence and ego. Between resilience and rehearsed answers. Between false modesty and genuine humility.

But it’s also what you do with that information.

It’s the ability to take a career that reads one way on paper and tell the story that actually matters. To connect the dots between roles, decisions, inflection points—and help a client see not just what someone has done, but who they could be.

More than search, it’s advocacy.

On one side of the table, you are helping a client understand why this person—imperfect, human, nuanced—is the right bet. On the other, you are helping a candidate see something in an opportunity they may not have fully appreciated. You are, at times, gently pushing. At times, pulling. We are translators. And translation, turns out, is not about language. It’s about meaning.

AI can process information. It can identify patterns. It can even simulate empathy. But it cannot feel a room shift. It cannot sit with ambiguity. It cannot reconcile the messy, human variables that sit underneath every major decision—ego, fear, ambition, family, timing, doubt, and insecurity.

Executive search, at its best, is applied psychology, risk management, storytelling, and trust-building. And here’s the interesting part: the more powerful AI becomes at processing information, the more valuable human judgment becomes at interpreting it.

AI may have an abundance of IQ. Executive search, at its best, is where EQ meets IQ. Which suggests this might be less a competition—and more a partnership.

But there’s another dynamic at play—one I think we may be underestimating. As the world becomes more digital and efficient, people don’t just adapt—they react. They start to crave what’s been lost along the way—tactile experiences, imperfect interactions, something that feels real.

You can see it everywhere. In a world of perfect digital streaming, vinyl records are making a comeback. In a world of infinite content, bookstores—once declared dead—are full again, not because they’re efficient, but because they’re curated. By humans, for humans. In a world of constant digital stimulation, board games have resurged, drawing people back to tables, to conversation, to something real. Farmers’ markets thrive in the age of global supply chains.

I think when everything becomes fast and algorithmic, people start craving texture—things that are imperfect, human, earned. Or like the faint crackle of a vinyl record in that moment after the needle drops and before the music begins.

And I’m here to say that executive search is texture.