AI is often deployed without cultural intention. This tends to bring confusion, resistance, and shallow impact. Culture shapes how tools are used. Without alignment, AI adoption fragments teams and undermines trust. You can introduce AI as part of deliberate cultural design. This helps you build an uncommon culture where technology serves humanity, and not the other way around.
Whether you’re guiding tech strategy or shaping organizational culture, your leadership determines how AI shows up in your company—and what it amplifies. To shift your culture to be a little more humane, despite AI invading it, keep these three points in mind:
- AI Is Just an Implementation Detail (NOT Your Strategy)
- Use AI with Deliberate Intent
- AI Isn’t the Problem; Your Leaders Are
AI Is Just an Implementation Detail (NOT Your Strategy)
Leaders everywhere are being asked for their “AI strategy”. It’s almost a cliché these days that AI-ifying your product, team, and company instantly makes everything better.
But, AI is not your strategy.
As Mark Fulcher, a high-performance leadership consultant, says, “You might say you’ve got a strategy, but really, that is not guiding the organization….What is the what? Why are we here? What is the purpose? What is our vision? And neither of those are going to say, ‘We are here to optimize AI.’”
Muness Castle, a data and engineering leader, echoes this sentiment: “People talk about AI as if it is disconnected from what we’re doing. At the end of the day, you still need to understand: What am I doing? Why am I doing it? Understand your purpose, understand what you want to do, understand the value you’re creating in the world, and then look at how can I use AI to leverage it.”
Anchoring your use of AI to your personal, team, and company purpose reinforces your culture, its clarity, and your team’s cohesion.
💡 Ask yourself: What are you trying to do? Then: how might AI help you do that better, faster, or more meaningfully?
Use AI with Deliberate Intent
So, if AI is just an implementation detail and not your strategy, what does that mean for the way we use it?
A recent MIT study found that “[c]ognitive activity scaled down in relation to external tool use…Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.”
Not what the business leaders I talk with are after. You may find different.
It’s not all doom and gloom, however. That MIT study found that participants who mostly used their brain and only sometimes used an LLM do just fine. As with most tools, the question isn’t whether to use AI or not, but how to use AI effectively.
Johanna Rothman, author and consultant who you might know as the Pragmatic Manager, points out what is at risk: “We mold ideas to make them consumable for other humans. That’s the part too many people cheat themselves out of when they use LLMs for their thinking.”
When AI shortcuts our thinking, we cheat ourselves out of growth. We weaken the culture of learning that underlies every high-performing team.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can protect that learning loop.
“If we learn to use AI correctly—well, usefully—then we can use that to offer ourselves more options for thinking,” Johanna offers.
And that gives us more options for approaching those challenging problems our companies need us to solve.
💡 In your next team meeting, ask, “Are we using AI to deepen understanding, or just to move faster?”
AI Isn’t The Problem; Your Leaders Are
AI isn’t your strategy; it’s an implementation detail and a tool. It’s also not the root problem.
Company after company is laying off employees they claim are unnecessary now that AI can do their job. I predict many of these companies are in for a surprise.
“Every time you hear ‘just,’ you know there’s some kind of hand waving after that—‘we can just have AI do this.’ And my experience is that’s either the hard part or it’s not nearly as useful as any of the other things we could be doing with our time,” Johanna relates.
“It’s not about the thing itself,” Muness points out. “If you go that way, what is your comparative advantage? Anybody can do that too.”
Your comparative advantage is always—always—your people. If you believe you employ coders, customer service representatives, or salespeople, you believe wrong.
Who you really employ—every single person in your company—are problem solvers.
And I have yet to find a company that lacks problems to solve.
Leaders who don’t get that will be left behind.
“Understand your purpose, understand what you want to do, understand the value you’re creating in the world,” Muness suggests. “And then look at, how can I use AI to leverage it?”
💡 Reflect: How are you helping people see their role in a changing world—and feel excited about it?
You Are Where Leadership Happens
If you want to get ahead of the AI curve, remember:
- AI is just an implementation detail, and not your strategy. “You can’t just deploy the tool by itself, and it doesn’t tell you where to go…You can move faster, and so move faster in the right way, or not, where you end up trapping yourself somewhere where you didn’t want to be,” Muness cautions.
- Use AI with deliberate intent. “The whole idea of what will replace us is a very interesting problem. All of the things that we have done as an industry has tried to move the feedback loops to understand where we are earlier. When we start talking about AI tools, the real issue is, where is the learning for each of us?” questions Johanna.
- AI isn’t the problem; your leaders are. AI isn’t the solution, either; your leaders are that too. As Muness says, “AI is a tool. Yes, it’s a really cool tool, but it’s a tool, and it comes down to what you do with it.”
AI can automate tasks, but it can’t replace the human process of reflection, iteration, and growth. That’s where leadership happens.
If you’re serious about building a culture that thrives in the age of AI, don’t just deploy tools—design transformation.
Join our next roundtable. These are intimate events that bring together smart, talented leaders for meaningful conversations and connections. I’m always fascinated by the diverse viewpoints my guests bring. And, especially, by the passion they have for helping their teams and clients build uncommon cultures.
Let’s build something uncommon—together. Schedule a premeet here.
Gratitudes
Thanks to everyone who participated in these roundtables:
- Johanna Rothman. Yes, there were meant to be others; they all canceled last minute. I was sad, and not. Johanna and I always have a great time together. (recording)
- Muness Castle and Mark Fulcher. I brought them together in hopes their very different backgrounds and experiences would create great conversation. They did. (recording)
If you’d like to hear more from these amazing people, check out our podcast episodes:
- Johanna Rothman: Catch People Doing Something Right
- Muness Castle: Get People What They Need