When I look back on 20 years in GIS, the moment that changed my career was not technical.
It was a question I could not answer.
I had been a GIS Manager for several years. I had built infrastructure, secured budgets, navigated political turnover, and mentored analysts who became senior leaders. I knew the technology better than almost anyone in the building.
And then a new executive joined our organization. She asked me, in our first meeting:
"What does your program need to look like in five years for the organization to consider it indispensable?"
I had spent 15 years preparing for technical questions.
Nobody had prepared me for that one.
I gave her an answer. It was not a bad answer. But I knew - in the moment I was giving it - that I was speaking the wrong language. I was answering as a GIS manager. She was asking me as a strategic leader.
That moment is what I now call the leadership gap. And in 60+ interviews for The Science of GIS Leadership, I found that almost every GIS professional has a version of that moment. Often more than one.
The reason it matters now is that the question is getting louder.
Right now, with agentic AI commoditizing routine GIS work, executives across every sector are quietly asking some version of: "Why exactly do we need this team when AI can do most of what they do?"
That question deserves an answer.
And the answer is not technical. It never was.
I am going to share that answer at the GIS Leadership Summit on July 12th in San Diego.
But before then, I am curious what this community thinks.
If you were asked - in your next executive review - "what makes this team indispensable to the organization in three years?" - what would your answer be?
Not a list of services. Not a deliverables roadmap.
What would make your team irreplaceable in a future you cannot yet see clearly?
I would love to hear your answers in the comments before we meet in San Diego.
