AI Transformation Is Being Led Wrong

Every company I speak to right now seems to have the same person leading their AI transformation - someone technical, someone who understands the tools, the models, the infrastructure, and almost every time, it’s setting them up in the wrong way from the start.

Because AI transformation isn’t a technology project, it’s an operating model shift, and when you treat it like the former, you miss what actually needs to change in the business.

What’s happening in practice is that AI is pushing more decision-making down into teams at a faster pace, with more autonomy, but without the clarity that needs to come with that. So instead of speed, you get hesitation. Instead of better execution, you get misalignment. And instead of efficiency, you often just end up with more work being created in different places.

That’s where performance starts to drop, and it’s usually the point where your strongest people start to disengage or leave.

The issue isn’t that technical leaders are doing anything wrong, they’re building the capability, but they’re not there to redesign how decisions get made, how work actually flows across teams, or how accountability holds under pressure. That’s not a technology problem, that’s organizational design.

And that’s where HR should be.

So why are they still sitting three seats away from the head of the table?

Because in a lot of companies, HR is still being brought in too late, asked to support what’s already been decided, to manage communication or roll out training, when the real work was in shaping how the organization would actually operate in the first place.

HR - this is your time to step up and shine.

Not to support this, but to lead it, because the companies that are getting real value from AI are the ones where HR was involved from the beginning, helping define how decisions are made, how leaders show up under pressure, and how teams are expected to operate in a faster, more distributed environment.

That’s what makes the technology usable.

Right now, AI is raising expectations across the board, but leadership capability isn’t catching up at the same pace, and that gap is what’s slowing teams down and costing companies far more than the technology ever will.

This is exactly the work I’m doing with leadership teams - helping close the gap between what AI is making possible and what leaders are actually equipped to deliver.

If this is showing up in your business, it’s worth a conversation.