How CIOs can learn from kintsugi, the art of restoring broken pottery with gold.

The Human Clock vs The AI Clock Are We Evolving Fast Enough and is your Organisation ready? For most of human history, change unfolded at a pace our brains could comfortably process. Generational shifts happened over centuries. Entire industries evolved over lifetimes. People had time to adapt, learn, and recalibrate before the next wave arrived. Now, the clock has sped up - dramatically. Today, Artificial Intelligence moves faster than we can evolve. AI isn’t just transforming business models; it’s compressing decades of disruption into years - sometimes months. The velocity of change has surpassed the natural speed at which humans can meaningfully adapt. We’ve moved from incremental evolution to exponential transformation. The challenge for leaders isn’t just technological adoption - it’s human adaptation. How do we prepare our people, cultures, and leadership mindsets for a pace of change our biology was never designed for? Because while machines can learn faster, the success of any AI transformation still depends on human readiness - resilience, agility, and the capacity to continuously learn in uncertainty. The future belongs not to the organisations with the most data, but to those that can help their people evolve with AI. Question for Leaders: What are you doing today to ensure your people - not just your technology - are ready for today’s pace of change? What can Leaders do: The most strategic move a leader can make right now is to understand their organisation’s current level of resilience - before the next wave of change hits. That means taking a resilience stocktake: • How prepared are your people to adapt under pressure? • How equipped are your leaders to support teams through disruption? • Where are the vulnerabilities - in capability, culture, or confidence - that could derail your transformation agenda? Too often, resilience is viewed as a ‘soft’ skill, when in reality, it’s the hardest business asset to replace. It underpins agility, engagement, productivity, and retention - especially when organisations face large-scale change, redundancy cycles, and the need for rapid reskilling. If AI is the engine of transformation, resilience is the shock absorber. It keeps people and organisations steady, when everything familiar is shifting. AI-driven transformation is not a one-time project; it’s an ongoing recalibration. That makes resilience not just a wellbeing priority, but a core capability for organisational survival. Investing in resilience measurement and training is how you protect your most valuable performance system - your people. Because when disruption becomes the norm, resilience becomes your competitive edge. Now is the time to assess, invest, and build resilience into your organisational DNA because, in the age of AI, it’s not technology that determines who thrives – it’s human adaptability. Contact Carolyn - carolyn@globalpsychometricinstitute.com #Resilience #Redundancy #AI #ResilienceStocktake

Great post Carolyn Cranwell thank you. These are critical insights and considerations for today’s workplaces. Too many businesses are forgetting the change impacts on their people. The risks if ignored might be costly.

The Cost of Constant Change: The pace of change is relentless. Generative AI, digital transformation, sustainability, reskilling these aren’t trends, they’re realities. But amid the rush to adapt, one factor is often overlooked: The people navigating it. The Change Crunch By 2030, one billion people will need reskilling (WEF). Yet “Frequent AI Users” report higher burnout than non-users (Quantum Workplace). Tech adoption ≠ transformation. MUB’s Perspective At MyUnicBrain (MUB), we’ve heard the same frustration from leaders and teams: “We’re moving fast. But our knowledge isn’t.” New tech often means more silos, buried information, and fatigue. That’s why we built MUB to turn fragmented knowledge into one central, searchable hub. Transformation Without Traction Melissa Dunn of Hays APAC: “Change fatigue comes from poor planning. Leaders must articulate strategy, not just launch initiatives.” The challenge isn’t just technical, it’s cultural. Reactive fire drills drain energy. Sustainable transformation builds momentum. Fear and Fatigue FOBO (Fear of Being Overtaken by Bots) and FOMO are driving short-sighted decisions. Lou Robey of #Voice4Impact warns: “The time to properly learn, trial, and test has been missing.” The issue isn’t too much knowledge — it’s the lack of systems to make sense of it. Knowledge Only Matters If It’s Accessible Alicja Malok of Hays Poland: “People resist AI not because they can’t use it, but because they don’t see the purpose.” MUB helps teams see the value of their knowledge in action, making clarity the default. Leaders: It’s Your Move Erin Loh of Hays Asia: “Too many SMEs are stuck in inertia. A learning culture needs active champions.” At MUB, we integrate into daily work so knowledge capture and sharing happen naturally, without disruption. As Charlotte Talmage says: “With psychological safety and permission to experiment, teams can embrace change and scale what works.” The Hidden Cost of Change Ignoring wellbeing guarantees failure. Burnout, attrition, and lost trust are the true costs. MUB is built to reduce friction and support people because transformation only works when humans are empowered by the right tools. Future-Proofing Starts Now The organisations that thrive won’t be the fastest tech adopters, but those that align purpose, platforms, and people. At MUB, we’re building the future of knowledge management where nothing gets lost, and no one gets left behind.

Arguably the biggest barrier to transformational change isn't the technology itself. It's how we're implementing it. We've seen a wide range of new technologies take hold over the last few years, and these require unique skills that take time to develop. People are struggling to keep pace with the changes reshaping their industries, especially when companies fail to plan ahead. We're seeing plenty of tech-driven initiatives, but leaders aren't articulating a clear strategy, leaving employees confused and burnt out. To make meaningful change, companies need to move beyond short-sighted, reactionary approaches and build the foundations for long-term tech innovation. #DigitalTransformation #KnowledgeManagement #Leadership

The Seven Stages of Becoming a Living Organization: A Journey Toward Human-AI Symphony An invitation to the evolution that's already choosing you Dear Leader, You feel it, don't you? That tension between the quarterly reports that still look solid and the whisper that everything is about to change. You're not wrong. We stand at the threshold of the greatest organizational evolution in history, where AI doesn't replace humanity but reveals what humanity was always meant to be. This isn't another disruption to manage. It's an invitation to co-create something unprecedented: organizations where human imagination and AI capability dance together, generating abundance neither could achieve alone. Let me share the journey that the most visionary organizations are already taking, not because they're reckless, but because they see what's coming and choose to lead rather than react. Stage One: The Recognition When success metrics meet their expiration date It starts with a realization that arrives quietly, often during strategic planning: the capabilities that built your success are becoming table stakes. Every operational excellence you've achieved, every efficiency you've gained, AI will democratize these across your entire industry within eighteen months. This isn't a crisis. It's a liberation.  When machines handle what machines do best, humans are freed to do what only humans can: imagine futures that don't exist, create meaning from complexity, and build relationships that transcend transactions. The most successful leaders are asking a different question. Not "How do we compete with AI?" but "What becomes possible when human creativity has infinite execution power?" Keep reading the rest of the piece, and all 7 stages, on medium magazine.

Yesterday I had the chance to attend the CIOXUK event hosted by EDS and it was incredibly eye-opening. As someone looking at this space somewhat from the outside in, it was fascinating to immerse myself in the world of leading technologists and innovation leaders — to better understand their challenges, their priorities, and how they’re shaping the next phase of transformation in their organisations. Here are a few key reflections and lessons that really stuck with me: 💡 The role of the CIO has evolved. Once seen as cost-cutting guardians, today’s CIOs are enablers of transformational outcomes — driving growth, innovation and new ways of working across the business. 🎯 The best CIOs move their stakeholders from “wow” to “how.” One of the most thought provoking insights I heard (under Chatham House rules!) was about shifting conversations from emotional attachment to factual discussions. Storytelling, empathy and clarity have become critical leadership skills for technology executives. ⚡ Transformation cycles have accelerated. AI is fuelling an unprecedented pace of change — and CIOs are constantly balancing risk and reward while learning faster than ever before. 📈 Success is measured in business impact. The true metric of success for CIOs is hearing from their board or exec team that IT is enabling business outcomes and growth. 🚀 Crisis creates opportunity. Many leaders highlighted that crises are the best time to secure investment in new technology — but only if you can move fast and execute with conviction. 🪓 “Killing Bambi.” A term that came up more than once — cutting projects or initiatives that don’t directly tie to the company’s strategic outcomes, no matter how attached people may be. Ruthless prioritisation is essential to real transformation. 🤖 AI realities. The “5th industrial revolution” isn’t AI itself — it’s how the world’s biggest companies use AI to change the world. Data integration remains a major hurdle, but many believe you can start realising AI value before data perfection. You don’t need to be a tech expert to use AI, but you do need to ask the right questions and understand your context to get useful outputs. The biggest driver of AI adoption right now? Fear of being left behind by competitors.

No matter if it’s a large enterprise or a new startup, I’ve found one thing consistently true: Most organizations — and people — develop to preserve themselves. To survive disruption. To maintain identity. To stay competitive. That’s adaptive development — building resilience to remain the same. But what if you could develop to evolve with change, not against it? Whole systems — people and their organizations — have another capacity: to develop in order to evolve with time, place, and context. That’s regenerative development — growth that expands capacity for transformation, not just preservation. Whole systems don’t wait for instructions. They self-organize, self-manage, and self-develop. They grow new capacities in response to what life asks of them. That’s the principle behind {RDT} DevAI — a Developmental AI Partner built for regenerative leadership. It helps your workforce evolve with each new time, place, and context — turning reflection into real-time evolution. It’s not another AI for productivity or automation. It’s AI designed to help your people think, sense, and evolve like a living system: - Self-Organizing: Helps teams orient from shared purpose, not external control. - Self-Managing: Guides reflection and alignment around the work itself, not bureaucracy. - Self-Developmental: Builds the consciousness and capacity of each person through daily engagement. This is development that comes from within. Not imposed, but emergent. Not mechanical, but living. Because in whole systems, growth isn’t engineered — it’s awakened. That’s the future {RDT} DevAI is designed to serve: organizations that don’t just survive change, but evolve with it. The future doesn’t need managing. It needs an evolution. Experience what it feels like to develop to evolve. Schedule a 30-minute demo of {RDT} DevAI below.

With the acceleration of AI, leaders are drowning in a sea of new technology and tools. I believe the organizations that emerge as leaders are not the ones with the most tools, but those that master a select few. In my latest Fast Company article I discuss how too many leaders are trapped in what I call the “Paradox of Abundance”: - Shallow adoption across fragmented workflows - Training overload that goes nowhere - Wasted time from constant context-switching The hard truth: writing the check is the easy part. The real work is slowing the game down, consolidating, and turning your mission-critical tools into muscle memory. That's how you break the cycle and set yourself up for real ROI. Read the full article for my take on how leaders can move from tool chaos to true mastery. https://lnkd.in/gp7YkFb8

A staggering 53% of SaaS applications aren’t used or go underutilised. As Kiva Kolstein explores, too many leaders are becoming trapped in a "paradox of abundance: shallow adoption, training overload, and fragmented workflows... and ROI that never shows up". The solution, he says, is depth not breadth AlphaSense

Kiva Kolstein is one of the most thought provoking revenue leaders that I know. This article highlights that AI can feel to easy and give a quick sugar rush, but value comes from doing the hard working of making it a part of your organization. It is like many things - where there is focus, there is progress. Are you focusing on AI as a crucial capability or just a fad?