It’s time to work different.

Over the past month, Matt Fangman, Sean Wood, and I have been rolling up our sleeves and looking closely at the fallout from AI pilots, experiments, and mandates. As former IBMers, we’ve seen this pattern before. The tools change, the buzzwords shift, but the confusion stays the same. Only this time around it doesn’t help that “AI” means fifty different things to fifty different people, and everyone from frontline workers to CEOs are super anxious about what it really means for them.

We’ve dug into these problems with a front-row lens shaped by years of leading transformation initiatives large and small — from Fortune 500 giants to mid-sized companies. We’ve been to this dance, had a hell of time, and stubbed our toes many times. Reflecting on our experiences, we’ve started to form a hard-earned opinion on what organizations need now more than ever: humans. The early data is in. 

AI cannot replace a human. Not yet. Maybe one day it will—but not in this week, in this month, or in this year. Maybe not even this decade. No doubt AI will improve, but I don’t know many leaders who can afford to sit on their hands right now. Waiting for a strategy to magically emerge is about as effective as blindly mandating people “use AI” and hoping they figure it out for you.

I don't know how many times I have to say and write this, but yesterday’s playbook won’t work. For reals this time.

While tech companies scramble to prove what they can actually deliver — versus what they can hype to bolster their IPO valuation — now is the time to double down on your organization’s best asset: your people. Put down the shiny tools and the performative theater, and invest in resilience, adaptability, and confidence.

Through our research, playbacks, and conversations, one thing has become clear: the ways of working that carried organizations through the last decade won’t carry them into the next. The future is still forming, but the signals are loud — yesterday’s playbook  is not today's playbook. We’re working on the playbook that will outlast the hype, the tools, and using AI like vending machines.

We believe the best play leaders can make is to change the music that’s been on repeat for the last decade nd find a new groove. It’s time to throw out the hype and focus on humans.

From Hype to Human

We don’t want or need agile (especially the energy vampire that is SAFe agile), we need agency. Agile had its moment but the lack of rigor around the defined practice watered down the word to become an inside joke contained within air quotes. Teaching, developing, and maintaining agency empowers a culture to figure out how to prioritize, setup, track, and get work done. Frameworks are fine for practice runs, but agency is what carries into the real game.

Pivot was good when people needed permission to stop and go in a different direction but still moving and working in the same way. That may have worked when a design sprint was all you needed, but with so much in a liquid state today, we need more than just one framework or playbook, we need them all. We can’t be resilient if we don’t know how to adapt to changing situations, environments, and expectations.

Disruption became a startup party trick—break things fast, hope someone else cleans it up. But disruption without direction leaves people burned out. What teams really need is resilience: the ability to absorb shocks without falling apart. Resilience is patient, cumulative, and built in the everyday discipline of how you communicate, not in the press release of your Series B.

Prompts are not the magic key to AI—most folks I’m talking today have come to the same conclusion. Prompts are just the syntax while literacy is the fluency. Literacy means you understand context, nuance, and when to ignore the machine altogether. Without literacy, prompts are just the modern version of shouting at Clippy and hoping it understands you and will shield you from imposter syndrome.

Innovation is what companies put in slide decks when they don’t want to explain what’s actually changing. It was the word at the end of this chain: agile, pivot, disruption…innovation! It has become as meaningless as agile. Ingenuity is messier and more honest. It’s the late-night workaround, the duct tape solution, the one idea that actually works under real-world constraints. Innovation is theater. Ingenuity is survival and moving forward.

Phases imply you can map reality in a straight line. But that doesn’t work, not even in a flat circle. Anyone who’s worked in real teams knows that’s a lie. Work isn’t a Gantt chart — it’s loops. Loops of trial, error, reflection, adjustment. The sooner we stop pretending phases create certainty, the sooner we can lean into the real rhythm of iteration. Would you rather that your work looks like a line drawn with a ruler or a beautiful weave of loops from a Spirograph?

Moonshots sound sexy until you realize they’re mostly about setting fire to millions of dollars in the hopes of landing somewhere far into tomorrow’s future—whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. Stepstones are humbler but actually get you across the river. They’re the test launches, the small wins, the momentum builders. Nobody brags about stepstones on stage, but they’re what real progress feels like. In this reality, we all need to be playing chess, not Chutes and Ladders.

Transformation, the king of all of hypedom. “The Word.” Transformation sells—well, sold—because it promises a before-and-after photo. That’s not to say that it didn’t happen, but it never followed the script and in most cases victory was claimed by proclamation. People and organizations don’t flip overnight, no matter how many phases you march them through. Darwin’s work makes it pretty clear, if you want to introduce change and make it stick, you need evolution. Sure, it’s slower, quieter, often invisible until one day you realize you’ve grown. Transformation is the keynote, evolution is the work.

Look, AI won’t save you. Frameworks won’t save you. Hype won’t save you. Your people might—If you help them to. Leaders who bet on them—and evolve with them—will still be standing when the music changes again. Bank on hype and tools and maybe you catch a rocket today (I doubt it), but what goes up will either crash or drift out of orbit. That’s not the play. The play is to regroup, reform, and build resilience, adaptability, and confidence—in your people, your work, and your future.

Make changes now. Today. This is not the time to launch another mandate or moonshot. It’s also not in your interest to bet your company’s future on free frameworks and training from a tool vendor whose goal is to add more seats to your site license.

You need to build the muscles that matters: cognitive, creative, and collective. Here are places to start, without waiting for a vendor demo or a consulting pitch deck. Yes, these are simple acts, but they are the right stepping stones to build foundational trust.

Name the anxiety. Acknowledge the uncertainty people feel about AI and the future of work. In the absence of information, people create rumors. Simple transparency beats rumor every time.

Invest in literacy. Don’t chase prompts. Teach context, creative thinking, critical thinking, how to keep the robot in check, and when not to use the machine. There’s an amazing book that directly targets this need.

Build agency. Give people permission, training, practices, and tools to prioritize, experiment, and own outcomes. Frameworks are practice runs. Agency is the real game. Make time for regular check-ins—dig in—and learn from them.

Practice resilience. Make small adjustments visible. Celebrate stepstones and give equal weight to failure and success. Encourage knowledge-sharing and collaboration. Progress compounds in loops, not phases.

Model adaptability. Show your own willingness to learn, to shift, to say “I don’t know, yet.” Leadership isn’t about having all the answers, but about how you find them and work through the problem. When leaders evolve in plain sight, they give their people permission to evolve too.

Leaders can’t outsource this. You can’t automate it. But you can choose to cultivate it—every day, in every meeting, in every decision. Bring people in to give you perspective and ideas to foster a resilient, adaptive, confident culture. Guides are fine, but at the end of the day your people take their cues from you.

The hype cycle will spin again. But the leaders who do this work will be the ones still standing when the music changes. As we’re beginning a new era you can bet it’s going to more than a few times.