An uncomfortable truth about the gap AI is exposing
Every organisation I work with right now is having the same conversation.
How do we keep up? How do we move fast enough? How do we not get left behind?
Of course, these are the right questions to ask. But they’re not the most important question.
I've worked across 38 countries and more than 400 transformations. And the pattern I keep seeing is uncomfortable enough that most boardrooms don’t always say it out loud.
The organisations struggling most with AI-driven change are’nt struggling because of technology. They’re struggling because the people leading the change haven't changed.
Technology has transformed, the strategy has transformed and the world has transformed.
The leadership hasn't. That’s the issue.
What AI is actually doing
Prior to AI, leaders had somewhere to hide. There was usually enough runway to course-correct and enough time to paper over the cracks with effort and good intentions.
AI has decimated that runway.
Change is happening hour by hour, and for many of the leaders I work with, it is the gap between the mindset that got you here and the mindset that will take you forward that becomes visible almost immediately.
The signals are there if you look. The relentless drive to work harder which switches to drained energy levels of your team. It shows in the avoided conversations and in the quiet draining away of optimism that people stop mentioning because they've learned it doesn't help to say it.
AI didn't create this gap. It just made it impossible to ignore.
What I learned by crashing a boat
I was part of a crew on a round-the-world yacht race. We were operating in an environment that changed by the hour. Exhausted. Relationships strained. We started to compete with each other instead of focusing on what was outside the boat.
We had stopped putting people first. It was all about numbers. Results. Survival.
At the start of leg four, in Wellington Harbour, in front of thousands of people, we miscommunicated and sailed into another vessel. Serious injury. Both boats put out of the race.
It wasn't a sailing problem. It was a leadership problem. As one of the senior leaders on that boat, I carried responsibility for it.
I carried that lesson into my business. And then, when the pressure built and the pace accelerated, I forgot it. I drove harder, implemented faster, retreated into my own certainty.
Until my business partner stopped me and said: you are going to crash this business the same way you crashed that boat.
The world around me had changed. I hadn't.
The thing nobody puts in the board report
Business transformation and personal transformation are not two completely independent things.
I think it’s really hard to carry out a business transformation without at least some level of personal transformation.
The one common denominator running through both of them is you.
The story you carry about yourself was formed long before the current pressure arrived and shapes everything about how you show up. The questions you ask. The feedback you can actually hear. The people you notice. The culture you build, one conversation at a time, every single day.
Under pressure, our patterns of behaviour and that underlying story reveals itself. I saw this time and again after weeks and months on end of relentless pressure at sea where the risk of death is a non zero possibility.
If that pattern of behaviour that shows up is curious, humble, genuinely interested in the people around you, that’s good news for your transformation.
If that pattern of behaviour is certain, defended, and numbers-first a crash is only a matter of time.
The shift that changes everything
The most powerful move I've seen leaders make and the one that consistently separates those who navigate this well from those who don't — is deceptively simple.
Moving from I am right to how do I know I am right.
Not as a technique, but at a deeper level - an identity shift.
Satya Nadella did this at Microsoft. He shifted the entire organisation from we know to we learn. The market capitalisation grew sevenfold. Not through better technology. Through the willingness to be wrong.
It started with the person at the top.
The question worth sitting with
If your organisation is finding AI-driven change harder than it should be, before you commission the next diagnostic or restructure the next team, try sitting with one question.
Where am I the constraint?
Not as self-criticism but as genuine inquiry.
The data backs this up. Industry analysts found that AI transformation is only 10% technology and 70% change management. Yet most organisations pour resource into the 10% and underinvest in everything else. That is not a technology problem. That is a leadership problem.
Because in 400 transformations across 38 countries, the pattern is consistent. When you put people first starting with yourself then the results follow.
That has never been more true than right now.
Services I Offer
Here's 3 experiments to play with around this idea:
2 Minute Experiment
Think about the last time you hit a wall in a transformation. Was it a technology problem? Or was it a people problem? And if it was a people problem, where did it start?
5 Minute Experiment
Think of one person on your team who has gone quiet in the last few months. Perhaps they’ve not said anything, but have just quietly dimmed.
Write down one specific thing they are doing well that you haven't told them. Send them a message today to let them know or even better take a few minutes to share it in person with them.
15 Minute Experiment
Sit with this question: where am I, the constraint or problem in our transformation right now?
Write down the scrappy unpolished version thats been circling in your mind that you’ve not said out loud before.
Ask yourself: what would shift if I moved from I am right to how do I know I am right? Write that down too.
Who’s one person you feel safe to share it with? Talk to them.