Read the Room and Reskill: Leadership and the AI Workplace

Futurist David Wallace-Wells recently published a long-form opinion piece in the Times entitled “How Covid Remade America.” As I read Wallace-Wells’s words, I felt pulled between two poles: the more manageable and/or scheduled world before Covid and the frenetic one that’s unfolding in real-time. On the one hand, I’m nostalgic for yesterday’s relics like daily office commutes, slow weekends, and the massive industry conventions that once brought thousands to a destination to network and “talk shop.” On the other hand, I don’t want to relinquish remote work, Uber Eats lunch and working in my Lululemon pants. Change is good.

Covering topics ranging from the rise of “hyper-individualism” to what he sees as the public’s accelerating distrust of legacy institutions, Wallace-Wells arrives at a sobering conclusion about life and work on this side of Covid. “The world does not seem now more buoyant or full of hope,” Wallace-Wells laments, “but abrasive and rapacious and shaped nearly everywhere by a barely suppressed rage. We have still not reckoned with all we have lost.”[1] While I’ll appreciate Wallace-Wells’s concerns, I do think one snippet of the opinion piece deserves further comment in this setting because it hints at hopeful, post-Covid shifts in the workplace. In the section entitled, “It Changed the Geography of Work Probably Forever,” Wallace-Wells recognizes that four times as many workers work remotely in 2025 as they did in 2019. Calling this phenomenon “atomized nodes in a distended network,” Wallace-Wells alludes to the sea change that tech – specifically AI -continues to deliver to the broader business landscape as well as individual enterprises. I’ll add this: Covid supercharged the speed of AI-fueled transformation in the workplace; this transformation demands that leaders read the room and retool for the future.

Read the Room

A January report from the World Economic Forum said that 70% of the skills used in today’s jobs will change by 2030.[2] That’s a breathtaking statistic. A similar study sponsored by LinkedIn found that 10% of today’s workplace hires have job titles that didn’t exist in 2000.[3] In fact, LinkedIn notes that “Since 2022, the rate at which LinkedIn members added new skills to their profiles has increased by 140%.”[4] Hold that statistic for later!

While most of us recognize that workplace paradigms are in upheaval, many are scared as hell that they don’t have the skills to lead amid the change. The numbers back up the fear. The report from the World Economic Forum showed that when it comes to change management in the era of AI “nearly three-quarters (64%) of professionals globally feel overwhelmed by the current pace of change at work.”[5] I’m scared. You’re scared. But there’s some good news beyond the statistics. If you accept that there’s no going back from AI everywhere, then you can manage the changes in your environment with help from both your team and supporting subject matter experts. Remember that statistic I said we would revisit? Your team recognize that adding skills to their CVs and LinkedIn profiles positions them to thrive in the employment marketplace. Your role is to give your team the resources to sustain their reskilling.

Reskill

A few months ago, I received a publicity piece from MIT offering a 12-week course in driving innovation through AI. Designed for business leaders, the course coupled classroom instruction and mentorship to give leaders a “no code” education in understanding AI and using big data in decision-making. While not a course I’m taking (thanks to great colleagues I work with), I appreciated its design… microlearning. Although the 12 weeks were packed with learning outcomes, they relied on 10 – 20-minute learning modules to build toward the outcomes.

Reskilling and microlearning are among the best gifts we can offer teams as they navigate the emerging AI workplace. While the subject of microlearning deserves its own article (I’ll pin that for later), it deserves a mention right here. Microlearning points toward a specific learning outcome, not necessarily a specific credential. Bite-sized and accessible in digital formats, microlearning can help workers upskill as new opportunities and challenges appear. An example? Imagine your company implementing an AI-powered customer service chatbot that handles routine inquiries, freeing up your team to focus on complex issues. Do your employees suddenly need to become AI experts? No. However, they do need to understand how to interpret chatbot analytics, refine responses, and step in when human judgment is required. A quick microlearning module—like a two-minute video or an interactive demo—can ensure they can effectively leverage this new tool.

In summary, as the influence of AI expands, our skilling will need to grow with it. Our job as leaders is to set the tone for upskilling/reskilling as the transformation unfolds. Learn daily and insist that your people do the same. Ensure to target learning opportunities to address the needs that are specific to your business.

While we can pine for the workplace we entered at the beginning of our careers, it “ain’t” coming back. Lean forward. Stay Positive. Inspire the team.

[1] Extracted from: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/04/opinion/covid-impact-five-years-later.html

[2] Extracted from: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/01/ai-2025-workplace/

[3] Extracted from: https://economicgraph.linkedin.com/research/work-change-report

[4] Ibid.

[5] Extracted from: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/01/ai-2025-workplace/