Reflections on Unleash: How are organizations preparing their people for AI?

A month after speaking at Unleash World - one of the most influential HR conferences - the market signals are stronger than ever: the bridge between AI and business outcomes isn’t technology. It’s human capability.

For all the excitement around agents, copilots, and more specifically in the HR space skills clouds, and workforce intelligence platforms, the biggest breakthroughs won’t come from new tools. They’ll come from people’s capability to apply them to real value-unlocking business challenges.

Unleash wasn’t just a showcase of HR tech. It was a preview of the next decade of work. 

The organizations set to win will grasp that AI is a leadership transformation before it’s technological. The clarity, direction, and alignment that leaders bring to this moment will determine whether AI improves human performance or deepens existing complexity.

AI lifts the floor. Humans define the ceiling

Let’s start with the fundamental shift AI is bringing to every organization. AI will automate documentation, reporting, analysis, and communication workflows - raising the baseline of operational performance. But raising the floor isn’t what distinguishes an organization. The ceiling is human intelligence: the ability to navigate ethical trade-offs, influence stakeholders, and exercise judgment in complex environments.

This is where the largest capability gaps exist today. Across sessions at Unleash, leaders highlighted the same challenge: organizations can deploy the most sophisticated tools, but without human capability, technology alone cannot deliver transformation.

For example:

• Microsoft’s Chief People Officer, Amy Coleman emphasized that bold, purpose-driven leadership is needed to shape culture and drive growth, not just respond to change.
• Virgin Group’s Chief People Officer Nikki Humphrey highlighted how inclusive people experiences enable performance and innovation in an AI-driven workplace.
• SAP’s Chief People Officer, Gina Vargiu-Breuer, illustrated the importance of integrating skills, culture, and purposeful technology to unlock adaptability and resilience.

Why capability building defines the next winners

What stood out from talking to fellow founders at Unleash is that AI has made role, skill, and task mapping dramatically cheaper. What once required billion-dollar investments is quickly becoming accessible to any organization. Leaders can now accurately see which skills they have in the workforce, what skills they will need, and where the gaps lie across teams and roles.

It’s not surprising that many HR companies are rapidly expanding into skills intelligence to reshape how the C-suite manages productivity, talent, and capability.

But almost no one is addressing the next question: once you know the skills you need, who will build them? Copilots don’t build judgment. Dashboards don’t develop leaders. Content libraries don’t create the ability to influence or make sophisticated trade-offs. 

This gap between intelligence and developing skills is, in my view, the defining opportunity of the coming years. As AI reshapes work, organisations need capability building that sits inside real workflows - the tools people use, the decisions they make, and the situations where communication matters most. 

As work evolves faster than ever, we need to evolve capabilities faster than ever.

The companies that treat capability building as a strategic discipline, inseparable from leadership clarity and cross-functional collaboration, will be the ones best prepared for what comes next.

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