#THINKFUTURE
Series: Building the Future on a Cracked Foundation
About this series
Artificial intelligence has become one of the defining leadership topics of our time. Organisations are investing billions in technologies that promise greater productivity, lower costs and faster decision-making. Those investments matter, but this series begins with a different question:
What if the greatest challenge of AI is not how it changes work, but how it changes the way organisations develop capable people?
In this THINK FUTURE series, Building the Future on a Cracked Foundation, we explore that question through the lenses of research, organisational psychology and practical leadership. Each essay challenges a common assumption and invites leaders to think differently about capability, work and organisational success.
The question that changed the meeting
The business case was difficult to fault.
For months, a team of executives had worked on an ambitious AI strategy. The proposal promised faster processes, lower operating costs, improved customer service and substantial productivity gains. The financial projections were convincing. The technology risks had been assessed, and governance controls had been designed. Every major concern appeared to have been addressed, and the board was ready to approve the investment.
Then one director asked a question:
“What capability will our organisation stop developing if we approve this?”
The room fell silent, not because anyone doubted the value of AI. Quite the opposite. Everyone agreed that the organisation should embrace it. The silence came from a different realisation. For two hours, they had discussed what AI would do for the organisation, but they had spent almost no time considering what AI might change about the people inside it.
Reflecting on that meeting afterwards, I wondered whether organisations are asking the wrong first question. Most begin by asking, “What work can AI do?” Perhaps they should begin somewhere else:
What kind of organisation are we trying to build?
The assumption we rarely question
Most leaders think work exists to produce value. It is an understandable assumption. Organisations employ people to serve customers, solve problems, deliver services and generate income. Productivity matters because productive organisations are generally better positioned to compete, invest and survive.
But what if that is only half the story? What if work has another purpose that is just as important, yet receives far less attention? What if work does not simply produce value, but also produces capable people?
That possibility changes the conversation. It suggests that every piece of work can generate two outcomes. The first is visible: products are delivered, customers are served, and financial results improve. The second is less visible: people develop knowledge, judgement, confidence, professional identity and the ability to solve increasingly complex problems.
We celebrate the first outcome because we can measure it. We often overlook the second because it develops gradually and is more difficult to quantify. Yet, over time, the accumulated capability of an organisation’s people becomes one of its most consequential strategic assets.
The evidence points in the same direction
This is not merely an interesting idea. It is consistent with decades of research into workplace learning, deliberate practice and expertise development.
Professional expertise develops through meaningful experience, guided practice, timely feedback, reflection and progressively more demanding work. Formal education provides essential foundations, but expertise matures when knowledge is tested against the ambiguity and complexity of real situations.
Think about your own career. Consider the difficult project that taught you resilience, the manager who challenged your assumptions, the conversation that stretched your thinking or the mistake you never repeated. Those experiences probably shaped your professional judgement more deeply than many of the concepts you encountered in a textbook.
Work has always been one of the world’s most powerful learning systems. The problem is that organisations rarely design or manage it as one.
AI changes more than work
Artificial intelligence is already changing how organisations operate. Research indicates that generative AI can improve performance on various knowledge-intensive tasks, particularly when it gives less experienced employees access to information, guidance and patterns of practice that were previously difficult to obtain.
Used well, AI could become one of the most valuable productivity tools organisations have adopted. This essay is therefore not an argument against AI. It is an argument for thinking more carefully about how AI changes the environment in which people learn.
Imagine a young accountant who no longer prepares initial reconciliations because AI completes them. Consider a graduate engineer who no longer performs preliminary calculations because software produces them almost instantly, or a junior consultant who seldom writes a first draft because AI can generate one in seconds.
These developments may improve productivity, but they may also alter where and how future professionals develop judgement. The tasks being automated may appear routine, yet some of them provide the repetition, feedback, pattern recognition and exposure through which expertise gradually develops.
Removing a task does not necessarily remove learning. AI may create new opportunities for people to test alternatives, receive rapid feedback, explore complex scenarios and learn from expertise that was previously inaccessible. The important issue is whether organisations intentionally redesign learning as they redesign work.
If leaders remove developmental experiences without replacing the learning those experiences provided, they may create a capability gap that becomes visible only years later. Whether AI becomes a threat to expertise development or a catalyst for better learning therefore depends substantially on organisational design.
That is a leadership decision, not merely a technology decision.
Building the future on a cracked foundation
A well-designed building is impressive. Its architecture, technology and appearance attract attention, while almost nobody admires its foundation. Yet every engineer understands that the foundation determines whether the structure will withstand pressure or eventually fail.
Capability is the foundation of every successful organisation. It is not easily seen on a balance sheet and rarely receives sustained attention in quarterly reports. Nevertheless, it influences every decision, innovation, customer interaction and leadership transition.
If organisations strengthen their technology while unintentionally weakening the processes through which capability develops, they may achieve impressive short-term results while creating a serious long-term vulnerability. The productivity benefits could appear immediately, while the loss of expertise, judgement and succession depth might take years to become apparent.
That is why this series is called Building the Future on a Cracked Foundation. The danger is not that AI becomes more capable. The danger is that leaders become so focused on improving today’s performance that they stop asking how tomorrow’s capability will be built.
A different leadership conversation
The next generation of AI discussions should not focus only on how much productivity can be gained, which processes should be automated or how quickly new technologies can be implemented. Those questions remain important, but they are incomplete.
Leaders should also ask:
- Which experiences currently create expertise in our organisation?
- What knowledge and judgement do people develop through this work?
- Which developmental experiences will change or disappear when AI is introduced?
- How will we intentionally replace or redesign the learning those experiences provided?
- Are we designing work for productivity alone, or for productivity and capability?
These questions do not obstruct innovation. They strengthen it by recognising that sustainable technological progress depends on the people who must interpret, govern, challenge and improve the technology over time.
Organisations that continue developing capable people will be better equipped to adapt to whatever technology comes next. Those that optimise only for current efficiency may discover that they have automated parts of the very system through which their future experts were meant to develop.
THINK FUTURE Principle
Technology can accelerate performance. Expertise develops through experience, practice, feedback and reflection.
Before approving the next AI initiative, leaders should ask one additional question:
If this work changes, how will our people continue becoming the experts our organisation will need tomorrow?
That question may prove more consequential than any productivity forecast.
Coming next
What If Work’s Most Valuable Output Isn’t What You Think?
Most leaders measure work by what it produces today. In the next essay, we will examine a deeper possibility: what if one of work’s most valuable outputs is not a product, service or financial result, but the development of capable people?
If that is true, how should it change the way leaders design work, evaluate productivity and invest in their organisations’ future?