is a senior director analyst in the Gartner HR practice. They support CHROs and HR leaders to understand and prepare for AI’s impact on the workforce and shape work for the human-AI era. CV engages with clients and speaks on topics including AI’s impact on headcount and roles, AI’s impact on skills, AI literacy, building AI-readiness across the workforce, and the intersection of inclusion and AI.
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In the fall of 2017, as Hurricane Harvey’s floodwaters receded across Houston, employees from a local construction firm joined volunteer crews helping homeowners gut waterlogged walls and begin the long road to rebuilding—during regular work hours and while still receiving company pay. The company knew this was a moment for the organization to support its community, but what they didn’t anticipate was what these employees would bring back. One volunteer described the experience to us this way: “Seeing the resilience of those people we were helping, and the impact we were having on them—[that] truly builds my resilience as well.” Across the group, employees who had come to Houston’s aid shared that the experience had changed them, giving them greater confidence in navigating uncertainty and stronger capabilities to adapt and develop creative solutions in their daily work. Further evidence from managers we interviewed supports the idea that crisis volunteering can indeed help employees develop some of the skills most critical to today’s workplaces.
Illustration by Minjo Jung
Research on AI in the workplace can show us how the technology is really being used and what it does to the way we work. Recent studies offer lessons for leaders on how employees are actually
There’s no shortage of assertions and predictions about AI’s impact on work. But what does the research say about what’s actually happening inside organizations—and how can you use it to make better decisions about how AI is implemented at your company?
Read more on AI and machine learning or related topics Generative AI, Decision making and problem solving, Personal productivity, Managing people, Talent management, Digital transformation, Trustworthiness and Automation
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Employees’ speech patterns can shape their careers, not because speech reliably predicts ability, but because managers often mistake familiarity for social skill. A new study, which draws on
This article was produced by Harvard Business School Working Knowledge and features the insights of faculty member Kadeem Noray.
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Your organization has invested heavily in collaboration. Employees communicate through Slack and Microsoft Teams. Knowledge is stored in shared drives. AI assistants retrieve policies, summarize meetings, and answer questions instantly. Internal social platforms make it easier than ever to identify who has expertise across the organization. The assumption behind these investments is simple: Greater connectivity leads to better learning. If employees can reach more people and access more information, they should become more knowledgeable. But that assumption deserves a closer look.
Becoming CEO can look like the culmination of a career. But the skills that help someone rise to the top job aren’t necessarily the ones that make them successful once they get there. Nitin Nohria, former dean of Harvard Business School, has spent three decades studying CEOs and working with new leaders as they adjust to the demands of the role. He says one of the biggest surprises for new CEOs is realizing that they can’t—and shouldn’t—run the company themselves. Instead, their job is to create the conditions for their leadership team to run it well. He also explains how CEOs can stay connected to their organizations, build the right leadership team, manage their boards, focus their time, and decide which emerging issues—including AI—actually deserve their attention. Nohria is author of The CEO: The Role, the Reality, the Responsibility.
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Leaders sometimes inherit an underperforming employee they cannot remove, leaving them responsible for results without the authority to address the problem. They can limit the damage by testing
Some of the most damaging performance problems have nothing to do with who you hired. They’re about members of your team you’re not allowed to remove.
The decisions leaders must make about AI today go far beyond what platforms to invest in: AI is changing organizational culture and leadership for good. In episode 1 of a special four-part series on how AI is changing leadership, we look at how the technology is changing how people interact at work, the new culture it is creating, and how leaders can get smart about talent management and strategy in this rapidly advancing world. Paula Goldman, Salesforce’s chief ethical and humane use officer, argues there’s currently a big opportunity to redesign work around the complementary strengths of humans and AI. She explains how AI could reshape entry-level jobs and the development of future leaders, why companies need to rethink internal mobility and talent development, and how executives can prepare their organizations for an AI-powered workforce without sacrificing accountability, creativity, or trust. Goldman is the author of Manage the Machine: How to Harness Human-AI Collaboration at Work.
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When my coaching client, Chris* became chief legal counsel at a financial services firm, he didn’t anticipate how fast the workload would escalate. Within his first year, the company closed three major acquisitions back-to-back, producing an avalanche of contract reviews, compliance filings, and regulatory matters. Every time Chris tried to hand something off, his team would say, “we’re doing our best, but we’re at capacity.” He understood, but since the work still had to get done, Chris absorbed it himself. Working nights and weekends to keep up soon compromised Chris’s ability to drive the very high-level strategy he’d been tapped to lead.