AI is not Excel
You can't learn it once and be set for three years.
The tools change every quarter. The capability shifts every month. The mindset that works is continuous learning — not one-time training.
If you're expecting stability, you'll be frustrated forever.
Start with who's ready, not what's possible
Don't build an AI strategy for the whole company. Find the two people on your team who are already curious. Give them a real use case. Let them run.
Their success becomes the proof point for everyone else. Adoption follows readiness, not roadmaps.
Most AI doesn't deliver measurable value
1 in 5 hits measurable ROI. 1 in 50 is genuinely disruptive.
If you're not redesigning work end-to-end, you're buying expensive demos. The tool is the small part. The work redesign — the part most companies skip — is the whole game.
HR shouldn't be an operating model. It should be an operating system
Most HR org structures are still built for a 2005 world while work is changing like it's 2026. Bolting agents onto yesterday's machine just automates the transaction layer and calls it productivity.
Translation: cuts. And it's already happening.
What I'm pressure-testing instead: two buckets, one backbone. (I broke this down in more detail in a longer piece on the HR operating model.)
1. People Platforms (Shared Services, redefined)
Payroll, benefits, total rewards, wellbeing, recruiting, people analytics, internal mobility — but run like platforms. With product ownership. With data. With AI built into the workflows. With customized exception handling.
2. Work Design + Adoption (Transformation Services, but for real)
Change management and comms, learning in the flow (not courseware), manager enablement, performance and feedback, EX design, HR technology — but measured on friction removed and work redesigned. Not on programs launched or workshop attendance.
The backbone: Transformation Management Office + AI governance
Nobody wants 100 agents from 100 vendors and a pile of risk no one owns.
This is the difference between HR as cost and overhead, and HR as a growth catalyst plus risk control system.
Governance is the gap most companies don't see
HR needs help. This came up in every hallway conversation I had this year. CHROs at smaller companies especially feel overwhelmed. They don't have technical support. They have ten other priorities competing for their time. The vendors are making promises the products can't deliver yet.
If you're feeling this, you're not alone. Every CHRO in the room is feeling it too.
Governance is the difference between HR as overhead and HR as a growth catalyst plus risk control system.
The CHRO should lead this, not react to it
Every productivity improvement, every workforce restructuring, every AI deployment eventually becomes a people problem. And people problems are HR's domain.
The CHRO who leads the AI conversation instead of reacting to it is the one who shapes the future of the company.
Where I come in
I'm brought in to build the readiness, governance, and program-level discipline that make AI-era execution real. Not to sell you tools. Not to hand you a 90-page strategy deck. Not to teach your team prompts.
To run the work that turns AI from theater into operating reality — anchored in your context, your readiness, and your real strategic priorities.
Thinking about AI in your People function? Let's pressure-test it.