I am seeing a growing trend in AI leadership articles, and it is encouraging.
Large organizations are finally recognizing that successful AI adoption has far less to do with the technology than with the people using it.
That is exactly the conversation I have been having on podcasts over the past year.
It is also the central hypothesis behind An Inbox Between Us.
Where I would take the conversation one step further is this:
AI is not making human connection more important.
It is making visible what has always been driving organizations.
Every undocumented workaround. Every trusted colleague everyone relies on. Every unwritten decision rule. Every relationship that quietly keeps work moving.
Those have always been the real operating system of an organization.
In a recent Inc. article, Human Connection Is the Most Valuable Skill in the AI Era, Ash Kumra points to a leadership reality more organizations are beginning to recognize: as AI automates more execution, the human side of work becomes harder to ignore.
I agree with the direction of that argument. I just think the deeper issue is even older than AI.
For years, we believed the organization was defined by process maps, org charts, and documented workflows. AI is exposing something different. Behavior has always been the system. Technology is simply giving us the ability to see it.
That is why I do not believe AI’s greatest impact is automation.
I believe its greatest impact is organizational visibility.
As more leaders arrive at this realization, I am excited that An Inbox Between Us will soon reach an even broader audience. The audiobook, narrated by Zachary Locklear, releases later this month.
The technology is changing quickly.
Human behavior is not.
We are finally starting to understand why that matters.