There is a lot of conversation about whether our organisations and workforces are ready for AI. It’s a topic that I have written and spoken about, and something I’ve been talking about on recent podcast interviews.
- Do we have the right technology?
- Are employees adopting it?
- Do we have the necessary skills?
- Is our data ready?
- Are the appropriate governance structures in place?
These are all important questions that management and leadership need to be asking, but recent thinking covered in Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan School of Management have made me wonder whether we are at danger of overlooking another, very important, one –
Are our managers actually ready to lead the transformation we are asking them to deliver?
Because some of the latest research and analysis suggests that successful transformation may depend less on technology and more on leadership capability, emotional intelligence, trust and the ability to translate strategy into the everyday reality of work.
Middle managers may determine whether AI succeeds
The role of middle managers can’t me overlooked. This is something I’ve written about before, and was one of the key podcast chats I’ve had this year when Gary Cookson came on to talk about his book The Squeezed Middle. And a recent piece in Harvard Business Review argued that it is middle managers that can make or break AI adoption, which resonated with me.
Senior leaders can invest in technology, develop an AI strategy and communicate an ambitious vision. But ultimately somebody has to translate all of that into how work actually gets done.
And that responsibility frequently falls to managers.
They have to help people understand where AI fits into their roles, identify which workflows need redesigning, encourage experimentation, address concerns and make judgements about where human expertise remains essential.
Yet how much are we investing in preparing managers for that role? – We talk a lot about making employees “AI ready”. Perhaps we should also be spending more time ensuring that managers are transformation ready.
Transformation also has an emotional dimension
In their latest article published in MIT Sloan Management Review, Declan Fitzsimons, Gianpiero Petriglieri, and Jennifer Louise Petriglieri approach the challenge from another angle by asking How Leadership Anxiety Derails Transformation. They argue that anxiety can initially help create urgency for change. But unmanaged leadership anxiety can quickly become destructive.
Leaders can become defensive which may encourage people to retreat into familiar behaviours – often an increase in blame and a lessening of experimentation. Instead of creating the psychological conditions for change, leaders can inadvertently reinforce resistance to it – and this feels particularly relevant to AI.
Confident organisational announcements about AI can often hide some very human uncertainties such as:
- What does this mean for my role?
- What decisions should I delegate?
- What happens if an experiment fails?
- How do I lead people when I don’t necessarily understand the technology better than they do?
Leadership during this type of transformation therefore requires more than project management – it requires the ability to acknowledge uncertainty without transmitting anxiety throughout the organisation.
Do we need commitment rather than loyalty?
Another angle explored in MIT Sloan Management Review challenges something organisations have traditionally valued highly: employee loyalty. The suggestion is that excessive demands for loyalty can discourage challenge and independent judgement.
To address this they propose adopting ‘principled commitment’ – an approach that connects to the organisation’s purpose and values, whilst retaining the freedom to question decisions and speak up.
This distinction will surely become increasingly important – if AI is genuinely going to transform work, then organisations need people who are prepared to ask difficult questions, such as:
- Should we automate this?
- Just because we can, does that mean we should?
- What might we lose?
- Whose experience are we improving?
- Where does human judgement still matter?
Transformations need advocates – but they also need constructive dissent, so the best culture might be one where people are committed enough to challenge the organisation, rather than remaining silent.
Purpose has to become tangible
I’ve seen quite a few mentions of a role which could loosely be described as Chief Purpose Officer. Whilst the creation of another C-suite role might be unnecessary, there is an underlying question that needs to be addressed – What does organisational purpose actually do?
Purpose can’t simply be a statement on the corporate website. It needs to influence decisions about people, technology, customers and work – particularly during times of transformation. If organisations are making significant decisions about automation, workforce design and AI, purpose can provide a useful filter – ‘Does this change help us become the organisation we claim we want to be?’.
If the answer is unclear, perhaps the purpose isn’t sufficiently embedded in how decisions get made.
The Bigger Leadership Challenge
The conversation about transformation needs to broaden:
- Technology matters
- Skills matter
- Strategy matters
But transformation ultimately happens through people. And managers sit at the point where strategy, technology and employee experience collide.
Will we then be asking managers to deliver one of the biggest transformations of work in decades while still expecting them to operate within management models designed for a very different era?
That needs to change – but how?
Four Actions for HR and Business Leaders
1. Develop transformation capability, not just AI capability
Help managers learn how to redesign work, facilitate experimentation, manage uncertainty and lead teams through ambiguity—not simply how to use AI tools.
2. Create space for constructive challenge
Build cultures where employees and managers can question how technology is being introduced without being labelled resistant to change. Responsible transformation needs dissent as well as enthusiasm
3. Equip managers to lead the emotional side of change
Managers need the confidence to acknowledge uncertainty, listen to concerns and create psychological safety while maintaining momentum
4. Connect transformation decisions back to purpose
Before automating a process or redesigning a role, ask not only whether it increases efficiency but whether it improves work, helps your people and supports the organisation you are trying to create.
The question facing organisations may therefore be less – “Is our workforce ready for AI?” – and increasingly – “Are our leaders and managers ready to create the organisation that AI makes possible?“
Because AI adoption isn’t the end goal – Better work should be.
