This
isn’t the first time I’ve witnessed this overly enthusiastic,
roll-the-dice approach to AI. Once again, technologists are scaring
business leaders into embracing the latest technology—without any
business context or strategy. The results are always the same: high
resistance, early failures, disappointment, and no real return on
investment. Gartner has rightfully crowned this as the “hype cycle.”

The
AI world is now divided into fans and foes. The fans cite endless
statistics, insisting that adopting AI is absolutely critical—otherwise,
extinction looms. (Case in point: the CEO who famously fired 80% of his staff for failing to embrace AI. A masterclass in fearmongering.) The foes, meanwhile, wave a recent MIT study as
proof that the benefits of this technology are overstated. That study
found only 5% of task-specific AI tools were successfully deployed in
organizations—clear evidence of the challenge in specialized AI rollout.
In contrast, 40% of generic generative AI tools (LLMs) succeeded, often
driven by employee initiative rather than top-down directives. The
foes’ refrain: “Leave us alone. We’ll get there when we get there.”

URGENCY WITHOUT STRATEGY

Both
camps wield data devoid of context or direction. They pursue technology
for technology’s sake, forgetting that organizations do not exist
simply to use the latest tools. Tools are just that—tools. It’s strategy
that should be steering the company’s investments and efforts. But what
if we don’t have the answers yet? What if we are navigating uncharted
territory, still assembling the puzzle? Sometimes, the unknowns far
outweigh the newly discovered. Welcome to the world of real strategy.

Strategy,
by definition, is not an insurance policy. It comes with no guarantees.
A real strategy embraces risk—the possibility of failure from both
external changes and internal missteps. Competence in strategy means
being able to say, “I don’t know,” and still move forward. Strategies do
not need all the answers up front; they need built-in flexibility to
adapt as the unknown becomes known, and to guide the organization toward
its goals. Absent a strategy, AI becomes a patchwork of experiments
with no clear success metrics. With strategy, every effort is framed by
the possibility—and definition—of success.

BEYOND CORPORATE STRATEGY: PERSONAL STRATEGY

Given the fear AI stirs among workers, organizations must consider an additional layer: personal strategy.

The World Economic Forum projects that by 2030, 39% of workers’ core skills will be different. The most important—and fastest—growing skills include:

• AI and big data
• Analytical thinking
• Creative thinking
• Resilience, flexibility, and agility
• Technological literacy
• Leadership and social influence
• Curiosity and lifelong learning
• Systems thinking
• Talent management
• Motivation and self-awareness
• Networks and cybersecurity

With so much reskilling ahead, employees need their own personal
strategy, a thoughtful approach to letting go of outdated skills and
embracing new ones. They need to design their roles in the context of
these new capabilities and chart a path to their next career milestone.
Just as companies challenge employees to automate tasks with AI, they
should also challenge them to envision how they will evolve, and what
new talents they must develop.

THE 3 PERSONALITIES

While
technology changes rapidly, the human response to change remains
remarkably consistent. I am not referring to resistance, but to the
varied ways people adopt change. Looking back at past transformations,
we can identify three distinct personalities of change adoption:

• The efficient adopter: “Do less, better”
  This
  employee leverages new technology to reduce routine workload, focusing
  on accuracy and quality. They use technology to deepen their
  organizational competence.
• The effective adopter: “Do more, faster”
  By embracing automation, this employee increases both capacity and output, positioning themselves as creators of greater value.
• The evolving adopter: “Do differently”
  This
  employee uses the technology not just to improve, but to redefine their
  role completely. They explore new responsibilities and avenues
  previously unavailable.

The technology may be identical, but employees will utilize it
according to their comfort and strategy, each seeking a different
outcome. All three types enhance performance and contribution, but
through individually tailored strategic approaches.

Giving
employees a choice reduces fear, fosters control, and allows progress
at their own pace—within the company’s broader AI adoption journey.

FROM PERSONALITIES TO A JOURNEY

In
my experience, empowering people to select their personal path
accelerates adoption. Often, these three “personalities” become a
sequence of milestones. Employees may start as efficient adopters,
progress to effective adopters as confidence grows, and ultimately
become evolving adopters. Freedom from fearmongering about job loss
fosters a human-centric, resilient approach to technology—and to change
more broadly. In Next Is Now!,
I argued that the true measure of competitiveness is not in skills or
products, but in the speed and scope of adapting to change. Recent World Economic Forum reports
reinforce these as essential skills for thriving in our new
reality—capabilities that transcend AI and will remain relevant through
future upheavals.

When steel-based construction emerged in 1890,
cities like London and Paris limited building heights to 10 stories,
clinging to the old world of concrete-based construction. New York City,
on the other hand, had the vision—and the strategy—to embrace
skyscrapers, accelerating technology adoption and surpassing its
European rivals.

The
fear of change, and the hype surrounding new technologies, is nothing
new. The lesson: Provide strategic context and human compassion; skip
the unnecessary fights and harvest the benefits faster.

Lior Arussy, author of Dare to Author! and chairman of ImprintCX.