Previously, we shared five things that you, as an L&D leader, can do today to move your organization successfully forward in this time of AI advancement and disruption. As our previous article made clear, fully integrating AI into your organization will be a long term initiative (even with the most nimble planning and correct partnerships). Now, we want to share a piece of good news: L&D leaders have the experience, skills, and mindsets to help organizations navigate it successfully.
As L&D leaders are deeply aware, upskilling colleagues while simultaneously unblocking the mental barriers required to successfully navigate any substantial change curve is a huge task. Rushing through each phase of education and evolution can create more resistance than it smoothes and this will be particularly true as AI capabilities and interfaces continue to advance.
To illustrate this point, we want to speak to AI integration for employees who fall into one of two groups: Product Perfectionists and Process Perfectionists.
A Product Perfectionist believes that their current level of productivity leads to perfectly optimized work products. In their world, this belief is true, valid, and powerful. If I am a Product Perfectionist, I might think that I don’t need AI because “it couldn’t possibly produce a better work product than what I already produce”. Someone who falls into this camp of AI avoidance doesn’t perceive that they have the need to learn new AI tools, because in their world, they already produce perfect work outcomes and products. Any time spent learning the new technology would take away from the time they spend producing their already perfect work outcomes, and therefore, is a non-starter.
Alternatively, a Process Perfectionist believes that they are already as busy as they can be, and again, in their world, this belief is true, valid, and powerful. If I am a Process Perfectionist, I might think that I don’t have the time to learn a new AI tool because “every second of my day is already perfectly optimized with value-add tasks completed by me”. Someone who falls into this camp is unable to see the long-term value that will be added to their role by learning how to use the new tools. Remember, they have perfectly optimized their day to be optimally busy every second. Now, we’re asking this person to learn a new tool that will probably slow them down and take away time that they need in order to complete their current workload. Again, a non-starter.
In both cases, human-focused change management is necessary to move from avoidance or surface-level adoption of AI to a place that supports both the ability and appetite for true AI integration. As we stated previously, this is a task best suited for L&D. Conversely, IT remains better suited to implementing the specific AI tools and technologies needed to support a given organization’s goals. Only through a strong partnership and collaboration between these two critical organizational support groups will success be possible.
In order to make AI integration a reality within an organization, leaders need to think holistically when setting up their new AI governance structure. To do so successfully, we encourage this very simple framework: Make IT accountable for implementing the tool, L&D accountable for preparing the people, and both, working in collaboration, accountable for identifying both the what and the how of your strategy.
True AI Integration is going to reshape the foundational DNA of organizational design. We have previously alluded to the way that traditionally entry level tasks will be more frequently delegated to AI tools and agents. Many organizations are publicly addressing this shift by freezing entry-level hires, but such an approach is disastrously shortsighted. Although the task may seem daunting, organizations will need to wrestle with the training and development needs of early career employees as their responsibilities evolve. Failure to do so risks undermining their own workforce’s future readiness and their options for talent pipelines and future hires.
Diving deeper into the specific shifts already taking shape, all Individual Contributors (ICs) who are tasked with guiding agentic AI will be dependent on project management and delegation skills that were historically reserved for managers or the highest ranks of ICs. Additionally, organizations will need to continue to build and hone critical thinking skills for every employee in the organization from the moment they are onboarded. As the differences between ICs and management or strategic and tactical roles blur, there will be an ongoing need and opportunity for L&D professionals to help organizations reconsider how to keep employees engaged and growing throughout their careers.
Zippering together humans and AI provides the highest reliability framework for long term success. Building the right balance of skillset and mindset to open these possibilities lies at the heart of the L&D mission.
Start to think how your organization will answer these questions: How can you prepare all employees to build out their AI support team? How will those tools enable employees to work smarter, not harder? What experiments can you run now that will get people ready for this new way of working?
Shifting the focus from a “climb the ladder” mentality to a “grow in ways you’ve never considered before” model can also bolster development of the entire workforce to maintain and evolve the skills necessary to guide and leverage AI tools over time. Roles and job ladders are going to look very different ten years from now and there is currently a huge opportunity to shape that future by exploring the options today. Future career paths may not be a clear journey from entry level IC, to expert IC, to manager. Instead, we must enable dynamic structures and systems that empower managers and members of the teams that they lead to look at the work and co-build new approaches in real time to most effectively get it done.
Start to think how your organization will answer these questions: If we are all managers, of either people or AI tools, what does that mean for organizational hierarchy, job descriptions and compensation structures? Who do we need to get on board so that we can evaluate our current structures and policies to ensure we’re ready to be successful in this new reality?
Remember, change is not a dirty word. In fact, humans were made for this. Any student of anthropology will remind you that one of the reasons that we, homo sapians, evolved in the way that we did was because of our ability to dream, to invent, and to change.
While having lunch with a friend recently, she said: “Look around. Everything you see right now in this restaurant was once just an idea in someone’s head. They had the idea, they made the change, and now we experience it every day as if it has always been. At one time, it didn’t exist and only because someone saw and made the change is it a part of our normal experience.” This AI revolution might feel new and huge and scary, but humans have been continually changing for the entirety of history. This isn’t uncharted territory. We can do it. It’s in our DNA!
Start to think how your organization will answer these questions: How will we normalize the change associated with AI to make it less scary? What support do we need to provide to people to get them moving in the right direction?
There is unlikely to be a single answer to any of the questions provided above, but there are plenty of options worth exploring. Bearing in mind Ethan Mollick’s “Best Available Human” framework encourages an ongoing balance between human and AI dependency that also provides motivation for individuals to build and maintain expertise. Pride is an intensely motivating emotion and knowing that one is the Best Available Human, and better than the Best Available AI, can help drive development even in the face of increasing AI competence.
These interwoven skills and responsibilities will be even more important if the ‘AI Bubble’ bursts in such a way that AI tool providers need to start charging for the actual compute costs related to AI. Today, AI tools are heavily subsidized, meaning that we are all paying a significantly discounted price for the capabilities already available on the AI marketplace. There are some who think that Moore’s Law will save us, and others who think that as Moore’s Law brings down the cost of today’s technology, we will simply continue to add to the pie, eating up every bit of savings as they are created.
Moore’s Law is the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years. In our context, Moore’s Law is being referenced as a tool that would enable AI tools to become more affordable, even if the current subsidized model of AI tool distribution “bursts”.
All of this to say, in time, we may find ourselves needing to make tough decisions about whether to pay more for AI than we would for a human to do the same task. Because, if we do get to a place where the subsidies dry up, and we, as organizations, have to pay the full compute cost for the AI we use, it will likely be more than the cost of the junior, entry level employee that the AI is “replacing”.
All of these tips and questions build to an important gut check for the C‑suite: Who is on your AI adoption team, and how are they being held accountable to the outcomes you wish to see?
If L&D isn’t playing an important part in your planning, your organization is optimizing for deployment, not capability building, adoption, and integration. IT and CTO offices are perfectly positioned to enable access to AI tools, and L&D leaders know how to bring appetite and adoption into the picture. If you build a structure of shared ownership, making L&D accountable for the human side, which includes the change management needed for people to truly adopt and integrate AI, while IT and Strategy remain accountable for the successful tool acquisition and rollout, you will be far more successful.
This strategy allows you to fund your transformation and measure both proficiency and workflow impact so that the entire organization will be ready to evolve with the new technology, a critical capability to survive and thrive in our ever-changing world.
Build organizational capacity today that will enable success tomorrow. That is L&D’s superpower; tap into it!
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