People-first AI
In under 10 minutes, you’ll have the context and language you need to lead smarter AI conversations at work—and stand out as the go-to guide on your team.
The warning in anti-AI's punk rock moment
Welcome back. I realize I'm inviting some boos from the audience right now, saying this. But as much as I believe early-career talent will see a surge in future hiring thanks to their AI-nativeness, I'm concerned about the negative sentiment toward AI among Gen Z. Is it completely unwarranted? Not entirely, but organizations and talent leaders need to take a people-first approach in how they talk to the next generation about AI. In this issue, I dig into both the warning and the opportunity...
The Relational Economy (And Whether We'll Be Ready for It)
Welcome back. In this issue, I had to discuss an Op-ed in The New York Times by Ezra Klein. He makes two important points. First, he provides solid reasons for why we're seeing upticks in fields that many assumed AI would decimate, including software engineering and entry-level hiring. Second, he explains why we'll likely see a future in which human labor will remain valuable. In a future where knowledge work is cheaper, we'll crave goods and services that offer human connection and curation....
Why Your Change Management Strategy Will Fail at AI Transformation
Welcome back. I'll be in New Orleans next week at the annual Society for IO Psychology conference. (If you're in town, come say hello!) Today's essay was inspired while preparing for a pre-conference workshop on "AI-ready organizations." Strong change management frameworks would serve us well toward becoming AI-ready organizations. But I wondered: do we even have the right models to help us deal with what makes AI-driven change unique? I dive into that topic and why I think AI change is...
Do we need "jobs" in the AI era?
Welcome back. As a work psychologist, you talk about "jobs" a lot. Our organizational structures and designs center around the job. Even how we think about our work as individuals is centered around the job, but the concept of a job is aging. With AI constantly expanding, what we do in our roles on a weekly basis, will we even need the concept of a job? I suspect we do, but for how long and what will replace it are other questions. Let's talk about why the job is under threat and some...
3 Ways AI Adoption Adds Value (Beyond Efficiency)
Welcome back. The newsletter's turning one year old this week! Thank you for being here! To celebrate, I'm bringing back one of our first topics that has only become more relevant since last year: the ways AI provides value beyond efficiency. I'm seeing this in my own work. AI can replace or reduce the toilsome, manual tasks that take up our time, but it also offers other benefits. It can help us get into the deep-work groove, encourage innovation through rapid experimentation, and make...
How People Managers Drive AI Adoption
Welcome back. Today, I'd like to revive an argument I made several months ago, but it has only been further cemented in my mind. That is, your managers need more enablement if you want more AI adoption. Our businesses are asking for transformation to stay competitive, become more cost-effective, and innovate into the future. I believe that AI can help us achieve all three, but before we reach transformation, we need adoption. Let's dive into how you can enable your managers to move this...
What Works Best When Working With AI Agents?
Welcome back. Today, we're digging into an interesting study from Harvard and Google DeepMind researchers on three AI assistant styles and how they interact with our biases and perceptions to drive different outcomes. It's these kinds of studies to follow if you want to understand how we can get the most from these tools and effectively stay in the loop for the tasks where that matters most. Enjoy! --Neil AI @ WORK BRIEFING Anthropic Releases HR Plug-in for Claude. Enterprise Cowork users can...
[New Study] What Actually Happens When Teams Work With AI
Welcome back. Excited to share a new study on AI productivity and collaboration. And they're not just studying people's behavior in the lab, they actually tested AI outputs in the real world to see what performs. The findings challenge some assumptions about human-AI collaboration... and raise questions we probably should've been asking all along. Enjoy! --Neil AI @ WORK BRIEFING AI Doesn't Reduce Work--It Intensifies It. HBR summarizes research on the negative impacts of AI adoption:...
Why AI Makes Human Expertise More Valuable (Not Less)
Welcome back. Here's a weird AI paradox: The experts who resist AI most strongly are precisely the ones who create the most value when they finally collaborate with it. If your AI initiatives aren't delivering promised returns, the problem isn't the technology. It's understanding what expertise actually does in an AI-augmented workflow (and why that becomes MORE valuable as models get smarter, not less). Enjoy! --Neil AI @ WORK BRIEFING What AI Actually Changes About Work (And What It...
"AI Didn't Work For Me" Before I Broke Down the Job
Welcome back. Most AI advice expires faster than milk. But there's one framework that's been quietly predicting technology adoption success decades before ChatGPT existed. It explains why some teams see game-changing results while others get disappointment. Why certain AI experiments take off while others fizzle out before they start. Once you understand task-technology fit, you'll never waste time on the wrong AI use cases again. Enjoy! --Neil AI @ WORK BRIEFING Mastercard’s approach to AI:...
In under 10 minutes, you’ll have the context and language you need to lead smarter AI conversations at work—and stand out as the go-to guide on your team.