The Best AI Leaders Are Thinking Like Architects

Fran Rosch is the CEO of Imprivata, a digital identity company for life- and mission-critical industries.

​When my partner and I visited Rhode Island several years ago, we came across an interesting house for sale. It was built in 2013, in an eclectic architectural style that did not really match our taste for a traditional, New England shingled home. But the bones of the home were strong, and the views of the Pawcatuck River were terrific. We decided to take a risk to purchase the property, believing we could transform it into our dream home. We’ve now spent almost two years renovating the space inside and out.

Our weekends disappeared into examining floor plans, walking the property and working with experts to balance our architectural vision with engineering constraints. In the process, I realized the hardest questions that came up weren’t about what we wanted to build or our favorite finishes, but how the space needed to work. How it flowed, how light entered and where existing walls or structures disrupted movement. Only after we understood those patterns could we make good decisions about what to preserve, what to change and where new systems belonged.

It was a familiar experience—a version of what I often saw in my work as a CEO helping organizations navigate technological change. The instinct in both settings is to start with the new thing: the wall you want to move, the technology you want to introduce and the capability you want to unlock. This instinct is particularly enticing for organizations today rushing to adopt AI. But renovating the house reinforced something I had come to believe about transformation: The goal isn’t to layer the future on top of the past. It’s to understand what you have well enough to thoughtfully redesign it for what comes next.

Ask the right questions.

AI magnifies workflow quality.

Form follows function.

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