---
title: "2026 Report"
url: https://stacklist.com/card/d494a544-d50d-4708-8429-3b24f7fe83e3
stack: https://stacklist.com/stack/e68cfd59-5cba-43c0-97d9-8da80498b609
summary: "The 2026 Report analyzes how 28 CEOs across US and UK industries are navigating simultaneous disruptions from AI adoption, workforce challenges, and geopolitical instability. Leaders emphasize that successful organizational transformation requires balancing technological implementation with human relationships, skills development, and intellectual humility in uncertain times."
tags: "ceo-leadership, ai-adoption, workforce-management, geopolitical-disruption, organizational-change, business-strategy, 2026-trends"
key_entities: "Relations Research (organization), US (location), UK (location), AI adoption (concept), workforce disruption (concept), geopolitical instability (concept), Q3-Q4 2025 CEO interviews (event)"
classification: "analysis"
content_hash: "sha256:122ec6c6cf4c84fddcdff390e43e88336682efacedf65135835168aab367d0db"
acp_version: "0.2"
token_counts_approximate: 8047
visibility: public
agent_accessible: true
status: "final"
---

# 2026 Report

Leading Through Convergence 
How CEOs are Navigating A.I., Workforce, 
and Geopolitical Changes 
Q1 2026 

Executive Summary 
In Q3-Q4 2025, Relations Research 
conducted in-depth interviews with 28 
CEOs (and equivalent) in the US and UK to 
understand how they are leading 
organizational change amid unprecedented 
market and technological disruption. 
Represented industries include healthcare, 
energy & utilities, banking, technology, 
logistics, insurance, travel, architecture, 
manufacturing, construction, and 
professional services. Our cohort was 
primarily large and mid-sized for-profit 
companies, though we also included a few 
non-profit organizations and smaller, fast- 
growing technology firms. 
We anticipated that challenges related to AI 
adoption would dominate our research 
interviews. What emerged instead was a 
more complex picture: leaders spoke about 
navigating three simultaneous change 
challenges— A.I., workforce, and 
geopolitical —each creating uncertainty, 
each demanding different capabilities, and 
all colliding in ways that stress-test 
organizational resilience. 
Report Structure 
I. At A Glance– Highlighting key takeaways from 
leader perspectives. 
II. What CEOs Are Experiencing 
III. Reflections and Recommendations 
2 | Executive Summary 

What We Heard 
• AI is one disruption among many 
• Most non-tech companies remain in early stages 
• Technology is evolving faster than organizations can 
absorb it 
• Leaders acknowledge uncertainty about which roles 
will be augmented vs. replaced 
• Fear and resistance are significant adoption barriers 
1. AI Adoption 
Bolting AI onto a bad process produces a bad 
outcome. Everybody wants AI. Everybody 
says, ‘I want, I want, I want.’ The reality is... 
if we are implementing AI into a weak 
process... we will not see the benefit." 
3 | At A Glance 
• AI implementation challenges are as much human as 
technical—arguably more 
• AI is a workforce participant that changes how 
humans relate, decide, and create value 
• Successful AI adoption requires attention to processes, 
technology, and relationships 
• True competitive advantage lies in optimizing human- 
AI relationships for greater collective intelligence and 
innovation 
What This Reveals 

What We Heard 
• Significant skills gaps exist between current 
capabilities and AI-era needs 
• Generational differences in work ethic, expectations, 
and learning approaches create integration 
challenges 
• Remote work tensions persist: broader talent access 
vs. inhibitor to innovation and development 
2. Workforce 
The number one change we actually need is 
more disagreement. We have moved away 
from disagreement and challenge and 
push. And that's really easy to fake when 
you are remote." 
4 | At A Glance 
• Navigating disruption with strained, transactional 
workforce relationships is nearly impossible 
• A better work paradigm is urgently needed that is 
grounded in reality, and that recognizes intersecting 
business and human needs in the employment 
relationship 
• We must strive for mutualism in accountability and 
value creation if we want people to be more 
empowered and invested in organizational success 
What This Reveals 

What We Heard 
• External forces (tariffs, immigration policies, 
global instability) are disrupting supply chains, 
markets, and talent access 
• Workforce malaise from external volatility is 
widespread and underestimated 
3. Geopolitical 
The persistent nature of it...this isn't like 
an episode or a pandemic that we're all 
rallying around...it's a steady stream of 
challenges that are headwinds." 
5 | At A Glance 
• In an unpredictable world shaped by forces beyond 
organizational control, intellectual humility becomes 
foundational 
• Leaders must build capacity to make decisions 
without false certainty and create organizations where 
“I don’t know” is acceptable at all levels 
• Humility enables organizational agility but challenges 
long-held norms that recognize and reward 
“being right” 
What This Reveals 

What We Heard 
• The convergence of AI, external disruption, 
and workforce tensions creates 
unprecedented uncertainty 
• There’s no “getting back to normal”— 
constant change is the operating condition 
4. The Convergence 
Referring to John Maxwell: "He was 77 when I 
spoke to him and he asked me what books 
I was reading and what courses I was 
taking. And I said, John, I'm 52. And he 
said when you stop learning and think you 
know everything, you have an issue." 
6 | At A Glance 
• Organizations are navigating ongoing change. Change 
management capability is insufficient; adaptative capacity 
must be built 
• There is a need to shift from episodic strategic planning to 
ongoing strategic scenario development and stress-testing 
• Knowledge management isn’t enough. Organizations 
require continuous discovery & knowledge curation, 
including questioning “what we think we know” 
• When AI makes much of humanity’s knowledge (with all its 
human biases and flaws) widely accessible, expertise alone 
loses advantage. Wide-spectrum curiosity, inquiry skills, 
and sense-making become crucial for long-term viability 
What This Reveals 

7 | Part II: What CEOs Are Experiencing 
Part II: 
What CEOs Are 
Experiencing 
The following themes emerged from 
conversations with executives who are 
leading organizations through 
unprecedented change. Their voices 
reveal not isolated challenges but an 
interconnected system where 
technological, workforce, and external 
disruptions amplify each other. Given this 
convergence, we heard how CEOs are 
leading amid uncertainty and beginning 
to build strong adaptive capacity. 

Three Converging Disruptions 
Leaders identified they’re navigating three 
simultaneous disruptions: A.I., 
workforce, and geopolitical . What 
makes this moment unprecedented isn’t 
any single disruption, but how they 
interact and compound. 
Technology: AI Implementation and 
Organizational Readiness 
When half of our participants identified 
technical skills and AI versed talent as their 
primary challenge, we expected to hear more 
stories of AI implementation getting ahead of 
workforce readiness. What we found instead 
was more nuanced: most non-tech companies 
remain in early experimental stages. Many are 
allowing people to use Gen AI tools, often 
without formal guidance, or taking initial steps 
to integrate AI into business software. The 
technological transformation is unfolding with 
leaders unsure whether to move faster or 
slower, with tensions between pressure to stay 
competitive and concerns about risk 
mitigation. 
The talent challenge is dual : finding 
technically adept talent while also building the 
understanding, proficiency and readiness to 
use these tools well. As one CEO noted, 
leaders need people “that are probably more 
sophisticated than where we were two years 
ago.” 
The upskilling challenge was often described 
as massive. Leaders describe trying to build 
new skills while technology is evolving faster 
than organizations can absorb it. A CEO 
described their current state as “we’re in a 
cloudy season right now with our team 
because we are introducing tech faster than 
they’re able to adopt it.” 
While leaders frequently brought up technical 
upskilling, as they describe upskilling in more 
detail what comes through is a recognition that 
they also need critical thinking, adaptability, 
judgement, and a willingness to continually 
learn and grow. 
“I would say the speed with which the AI 
technology is moving. The technology is 
moving faster than humans can adapt to it 
and that’s unprecedented in my life.” 
A software company CEO emphasized the 
impossibility of waiting: “I think the biggest 
variable is the speed at which the change is 
occurring and that is just something uniquely 
di�erent than what we’ve seen across the 
history of this company and across the history 
of society. You don’t have the luxury of saying, 
well, let me wait and see how AI is going to be 
perfected.” 
“You can have all the greatest 
technologies in the world, but 
if you don’t have the right 
people in the right places with 
the right mindset trying to 
effectively execute and use 
those technologies and those 
resources properly, then it 
means nothing.” 
8 | Part II: What CEOs Are Experiencing 

Fear is compounding the challenge . The 
emotional landscape around AI adoption is 
complex. One healthcare leader stated: 
“The amount of fear that stops change 
was really surprising to me.” 
The fear isn’t irrational. Leaders acknowledged 
AI will both augment and replace roles, the 
extent of each unknown. 
“We had an analytics team, 29 
individuals. We downsized it to two. And 
with just an AI-enabled solution that’s a 
$2500 a month subscription the insights 
are better and faster.” 
A tech CEO was blunt in his assessment: 
“Most white-collar roles are going away, 
and I helped build the systems that are 
replacing them.” 
Another leader observed: 
“AI is here, it is accelerating and the pace 
of change from here is likely to be such 
that there is a revolution coming. And both 
society and business I don’t think are 
quite ready for it yet…I’m pretty certain 
they are not ready for it.” 
Amid AI disruption and displacement, leaders 
stress the enduring human value particularly in 
“moments that matter,” the high stakes, 
emotionally charged situations where 
judgement empathy, and relationship are 
essential. As one CEO put it, 
“Peace of mind’s gonna come from 
relationships. It’s not gonna come from a 
computer.” 
“If you don’t have someone on the other 
side of the AI engine that understands 
what the output should look like or 
understands how to interpret it, you don’t 
really know the next three questions to 
ask the AI engine to get it to refine it.” 
AI strategies varied widely across our 
participants, from highly deliberate to largely 
passive. One large enterprise leader noted: 
“Our approach has been more needs based. 
Where are the opportunities that we have for 
work transformation and how do the 
workflows need to change and then what is 
the tool or the technology to solve it.” Others 
acknowledged “we don’t have an AI strategy 
right now, just a few use cases.” 
“I think the biggest thing is 
people are just spooked by it. 
It’s a little Big Brother. There’s 
also a level of accountability 
that comes through using 
those tools. 
People are like, wow, I don’t 
like this meeting recorded… 
I can’t speak openly.” 
9 | Part II: What CEOs Are Experiencing 

“This isn’t like an episode or a 
pandemic that we’re all 
rallying around… I don’t want 
to say a constant barrage 
because that’s overly 
hyperbolic, but it’s a steady 
stream of challenges that are 
headwinds… we ‘got back to 
normal’ after COVID and 
really not at all. So, I think 
acceptance that the new 
normal is a relatively 
uncertain environment with 
constant change… And less 
and less, the specific tactics 
and strategies that have been 
deployed in the past are 
relevant to the current 
situation.” 
External Policy Volatility and 
Operational Impacts 
While leaders navigate technological 
transformation, external forces create 
additional complexity. A healthcare system 
leader captured the intensity: “I think the 
hardest thing in leading change is the pace in 
which outside variables are impacting my 
business at a speed and a rate that is 
unprecedented…and the ground keeps 
shifting underneath you” 
A construction services CEO put the recent 
period in historical perspective: “The number 
of macro events that have happened in the 
last five years has been at a pace that…makes 
the previous 35 years look like it was relatively 
calm and linear, and it wasn’t.” 
The psychological toll emerged in multiple 
conversations. A nonprofit CEO observed: “I 
just feel this like angst with our people, and it 
has to do with all the external things that are 
going on right now. And then it starts to 
translate to how they see their workloads and 
their stress at work.” 
Specific policy impacts varied by industry. An 
architecture leader described multiple 
dimensions of concern: “I think an external 
risk to our profession is obviously tari�s 
because it impacts the construction industry, 
but the one that’s not talked about enough 
that I’m really keen on following is 
immigration, and it impacts us in two ways. 
One, it’s our workforce because we have a big, 
very diverse global workforce. The largest part 
of our firm is in the U.S., but we have a lot of 
visa holders, and also how immigration will 
impact the construction industry because of 
the laborers. The second thing is fiscal 
policies as it impacts our clients…we work 
with higher education clients and they’re 
trying to figure out are they actually getting 
funding? Are they now going to have to shift 
what they spend their funding on?” 
“The biggest challenge we (as a 
technology firm) face is there’s no people 
to hire. Our education system is still 
turning out amazing people. But if you 
don’t allow them to stay in the United 
States to do work here, it’s a problem. It’s 
impossible to get talent…good luck getting 
an H1, even an E1 visa. It’s made the 
companies I’m associated with move work 
offshore.” 
Despite these challenges, some leaders 
identified an upside of developing capabilities 
enabling them to better navigate volatility. A 
healthcare services CEO emphasized: “I think 
it’s really going to be our ability to adjust 
and…my ability to be open minded to change 
and allowing it and be an organization that 
embraces it.” 
“I think for every industry right now the 
more comfortable you are with ambiguity, 
the more willing you are accepting a new 
reality and willing to try things…that’s 
who’s going to win in this next round. 
10 | Part II: What CEOs Are Experiencing 

Workforce: Generational Integration 
and Remote Work Tensions 
The third disruption centers on workforce 
dynamics. Leaders described tensions around 
expectations, work ethic, and generational 
integration. One CEO articulated: “The 
workforce has this disconnect between their 
expectations and in some ways 
reality…There’s so much opportunity for them 
to provide feedback and yet really not be 
accountable for solutions. OK, you’ve given 
the feedback, here’s the change that’s coming 
because of it. And yet it’s still not hitting home 
with them.” 
One CEO noted commitment di�erences: “Just 
getting people to really invest in the business 
from a mindset standpoint and then 
ultimately making commitments to that…it’s 
generational.” 
Another observed: “Regarding work ethic, the 
generation of workers after Gen X don’t seem 
to have the customer service mantra in their 
core. That work is not even the second 
priority, or so it seems. So, it’s generational.” 
Another leader spoke about the shift in 
attitudes about work: “[We used to have] 
people wanting to work… now we have people 
looking to sit behind a desk and watch videos 
all day. So, they’re not as committed, not as 
loyal to the company.” 
Leaders are grappling with how to respond: 
“The generational issues that we’re all dealing 
with right now and trying to understand them 
in a way that is actually going to help us to 
motivate those people and get them excited.” 
Leaders also recognized these patterns cannot 
be reduced to generational character; every 
generation is shaped by di�erent technologies, 
media, and ways of learning that define how 
they approach work. What they're grappling 
with may be less about 'fixing' younger workers 
and more about adapting to fundamental shifts 
in the employment relationship itself. 
Remote work adds complexity . Remote 
work adds complexity to how leaders think 
about innovation and collaboration. While 
many noted talent pool accessibility and even 
productivity benefits, they struggled to assess 
remote work's impact on less measurable 
outcomes such as innovation. One CEO 
lamented lost spontaneity: 
“The days of sitting in front of a 
whiteboard are just not like they used to 
be, where you can move a lot quicker and 
people aren’t distracted.” 
The innovation concern emerged starkly. One 
CEO described a client’s experience: 
“One of our clients is a large 
manufacturer…they don’t feel they’ve 
done anything really innovative for the last 
five years and that’s because their 
production folks are on the floor, but their 
11 | Part II: What CEOs Are Experiencing 
“In the old days, we’d just 
work 23 hours if we had to get 
something done. And younger 
lawyers would rather fail than 
work that hard.” 

R&D and strategy teams are all 
dispersed.” 
“I had a CEO say to me, everybody’s in 
Wyoming or Colorado or Montana living 
their best Yellowstone life and we can’t get 
people together…. the number one change 
we actually need is more disagreement. 
We have moved away from disagreement 
and challenge and push. And that’s really 
easy to fake or to not really lean in on 
when you are remote.” 
The relationship between remote work and 
innovation remains under active debate. Some 
research suggests remote work reduces 
spontaneous collaboration; other studies find 
that structured remote practices can enhance 
certain types of innovation. What's clear is that 
di�erent work—collaborative brainstorming 
versus deep individual work, incremental 
refinement versus breakthrough thinking—may 
require di�erent spatial arrangements. Leaders 
are navigating these tensions without clear 
playbooks, making attribution di�icult: Is 
reduced innovation due to remote work itself, 
or to how it's been implemented? To lack of 
physical proximity, or to other pandemic-era 
disruptions that coincided with the remote 
shift? 
What emerged most clearly: the 
technological, workforce, and external 
disruptions are not problems to be 
solved sequentially. They’re 
interconnected and require systems 
level thinking and response. 
Organizations navigating this 
convergence successfully are building 
adaptive capacity to better inquire, 
sense, learn, and adapt. 
12 | Part II: What CEOs Are Experiencing 

13 | Part III: Reflections & Recommendations 
Part III: 
Reflections & 
Recommendations 
The leaders we spoke with are grappling 
thoughtfully with extraordinary challenges. 
Their insights reveal both the complexity of 
the moment and the sophistication with 
which they’re approaching it. What follows 
are our reflections on patterns we observed 
as well as some provocation that we hope 
leaders find helpful in navigating their 
organizations. 

Why Adaptive Capability Matters 
Leaders are thinking about how their 
organizations can thrive in uncertainty. We 
heard it in their emphasis on comfort with 
ambiguity, in their recognition that “there’s no 
getting back to normal, “ and in their 
investments in systems and processes that 
create resilience. 
What does it take for organizations to move 
away from corporate systems that operate on 
functional expertise and siloed 
thinking and to build the 
capacity to sense patterns 
across the whole system, to 
understand how changes in one 
part ripple through others, and 
to make decisions that optimize 
for collective intelligence rather 
than individual function 
optimization? The answer lies in 
something deeper than most 
organizations have built: deep 
intellectual humility. 
The Foundation: Embracing Reality & 
Deep Intellectual Humility 
Leaders in our study consistently 
demonstrated intellectual humility: 
acknowledging what they don't know, inviting 
challenge, admitting mistakes. But as we 
reflected on their insights about navigating 
convergent disruption, we recognized 
something crucial: this humility cannot remain 
a leadership virtue alone. It must become 
organizational infrastructure. 
Why? Because the adaptive capacity 
organizations need—the ability to sense 
accurately, learn continuously, and adjust 
course amid constant change—is impossible 
without it. Organizations cannot navigate the 
workforce transformations, AI integration 
challenges, and sustained external volatility 
that leaders described if they're defending fixed 
positions, punishing uncertainty, or optimizing 
for being right rather than for learning. 
Intellectual humility isn't one capability among 
many; it's the foundation that makes other 
adaptive capabilities possible. 
Intellectual humility accepts that reality 
isn’t static… it’s always in motion. It’s far more 
complex and encompassing than any 
individual, or any organization, can fully 
perceive at any given moment. Our mental 
models, our strategies, our assumptions are 
necessarily incomplete and often wrong. 
Organizations that can’t embrace this become 
brittle. They pour concrete over plans. They 
defend their worldview rather than updating it. 
They punish people who bring disconfirming 
evidence. They optimize for being right rather 
than for learning. 
Organizations built on intellectual humility 
operate di�erently. They assume their current 
understanding is incomplete. They actively 
seek disconfirming evidence. They create 
systems that surface weak signals before they 
become crises. They reward people for 
changing course in light of new conditions 
rather than for defending plans and positions. 
14 | Part III: Reflections & Recommendations 

This isn’t about indecisiveness or lack of 
conviction. Leaders must still make decisions, 
often with incomplete information. Humility 
means building organizations where “I don’t 
know” is not only acceptable but valued as the 
starting point for learning and “I was wrong” is 
celebrated as growth rather than punished as 
weakness. Constructive disagreement and 
challenge are essential inputs to better 
decisions. 
We heard leaders in this study modeling 
humility: “I didn’t want yes men. I want people 
to challenge me.” We heard it in the recognition 
that “the more comfortable you are with 
ambiguity…that’s who’s going to win in this next 
round.” We heard it in the emphasis on 
continuous learning throughout one’s life. 
Modeling humility individually isn’t 
enough. Humility needs to 
become organizational and 
embedded in how strategy gets 
developed, how knowledge gets 
managed, how decisions get 
made, and how learning happens. 
Consider strategic planning. 
Traditional approaches assume 
you can analyze the environment, 
identify opportunities and threats, 
develop a fixed plan, and execute 
it. This doesn’t work when the 
environment is in constant flux, when multiple 
disruptions are colliding unpredictably, and 
when the tactics that worked last quarter may 
not work this quarter. Strategic planning 
becomes more useful when it’s rooted in 
strategic scenario development and stress- 
testing. Strategic thinking is as important as 
ever, but it means moving from rigid three to 
five-year plans to setting a path forward while 
being more prepared for multiple di�erent 
scenarios that could unfold, sensing and 
adjusting along the way. Doing this well 
requires far more humility than most 
appreciate. 
Consider knowledge management. 
Traditional approaches assume knowledge is 
relatively stable: you capture it, codify it, store 
it, retrieve it. When conditions are constantly 
changing, the “best practices” that worked 
beautifully in the past may no longer apply. 
This is why we think organizations must shift 
from knowledge management to e�ective 
inquiry and continuous knowledge curation. 
Knowledge curation means constantly 
questioning “what we think we know.” It means 
creating cultures where expertise is valued not 
for having answers but for asking better 
questions and synthesizing across domains. 
Consider decision-making. Traditional 
hierarchical models assume those at the top 
have the best information and judgment. 
Authority flows from position. Status often 
comes from being right. But in complex, fast- 
changing environments, the people closest to 
the work often have the most current and 
relevant information. Decision-making from the 
top without frontline and external input is like 
flying blind. 
15 | Part III: Reflections & Recommendations 

Organizations built on humility create decision- 
making processes that explicitly incorporate 
uncertainty. They have review mechanisms that 
evaluate not just outcomes but the quality of 
thinking that led to decisions. They distribute 
authority to those with the best information. 
They make the reasoning behind decisions 
transparent so others can learn from them. 
This requires humility: recognizing that position 
doesn’t equal omniscience, that collective 
intelligence often exceeds individual genius, 
that being wrong is inevitable and learning from 
it is essential. 
Intellectual humility is the foundation of 
adaptive capacity. Without it, organizations 
cannot sense accurately, learn continuously, or 
adjust course e�ectively. 
The Urgent Need for A Better 
Work Paradigm 
Leaders spoke candidly about 
workforce challenges particularly 
generational di�erences and work 
ethic concerns. There was 
frustration, certainly, but also 
genuine puzzlement about how to 
motivate and integrate younger 
workers. 
Through our decades of work with 
organizations navigating these tensions, we've 
observed that the the generational integration 
challenge is real. But it’s a symptom, not the 
root cause. The root cause is a work paradigm 
that no longer fits the reality organizations face. 
The social contract that came out of the 
Industrial Age, where employees o�ered loyalty 
and employers o�ered paternalistic security 
and career progression has been dismantling 
for decades (Cappelli 1999; Wartzman 2017). 
Neither loyalty nor tenure provides the glue to 
keep employment relationships intact (and nor 
should it). However, without an alternative 
model the relationship between people and 
employers often defaults to ‘transactional’ with 
each party serving their self-interest at the 
expense of the other. 
Leaders recognize these fractures but lack a 
clear map for approaching work di�erently. Yet 
the need is urgent: adaptive capacity requires 
people who are deeply invested, who will speak 
truth to power, who will collaborate across 
boundaries, who will experiment and learn and 
adjust. That level of investment doesn't emerge 
from transactional relationships. 
In today’s workplaces , we need employment 
relationships that can be durable and 
withstand the stresses and strains of change. 
We need people to be more accountable and 
empowered all the way to the front lines. When 
relationships are durable, there is a dynamic of 
mutualism; it is mutual benefit and mutual 
accountability between the organization and 
the person that makes the relationship 
healthier, more resilient, and able to thrive. The 
relationship “glue” is both parties choosing to 
remain a�iliated for as long as each is realizing 
value; parties should move on when that’s no 
16 | Part III: Reflections & Recommendations 

longer the case. We need to help younger 
workers, and all generations, as well as 
managers and leaders learn a new set of 
principles governing work. We must stop 
shielding people from business realities but 
also teach managers how to better respond to 
human realities and needs. Work roles exist to 
produce value for the organization, but when 
people in the role experience little value 
beyond a paycheck there is weak intrinsic 
investment and motivation. 
Some leaders are moving this direction 
intuitively. But most organizations haven’t 
made the shift explicit. Some are 
experimenting with di�erent organizational 
structures to better empower people. Some 
are moving away from traditional unilateral 
performance measurement in favor of 
approaches that are more forward-facing and 
developmental. These e�orts can be di�icult 
to pull o� without arming all constituents with 
new rules of the road for how work works. 
Perhaps this is the most crucial upskilling 
needed in today’s workforces. 
AI as Relational Entrant 
Leaders understand that AI is more 
than a technology implementation. 
They spoke about it changing how 
work happens, about the need for 
human-in-the-loop oversight, about 
the “moments that matter” where 
human judgment remains essential. 
AI is entering your organization as a 
new participant in your relationship network. 
We encourage leaders to think holistically, not 
just about processes and technology. When a 
new member joins a team, relationships 
reconfigure. Communication patterns shift. 
Power dynamics adjust. Decision-making 
processes evolve. The team is fundamentally 
di�erent, not just numerically larger. 
AI does this at organizational scale. It’s not just 
a tool that humans use. It’s a participant that 
takes on roles or functions within a workflow, 
learns, and changes how humans think, learn, 
relate to their own work and to each other. 
Clearly, AI can perform certain tasks better, 
faster, and more consistently than humans. AI 
can free people to do higher-value work that AI 
can’t do. AI can also fail precisely at “moments 
that matter”—the high-stakes, emotionally 
charged situations where human judgment, 
empathy, and relationship become essential. 
Deciding how to best utilize human and AI 
capabilities is no small matter, fraught with 
risks and opportunities. 
As AI technology is increasingly commoditized, 
we think advantages will go to those who most 
thoughtfully redesign the relationships 
between humans and AI for collective 
intelligence. 
This means asking di�erent questions: “what 
emerges when humans and AI work together 
that neither could achieve alone?”. Instead of 
just “how do we train people to use AI?” we 
need to ask, “how do we redesign roles so 
17 | Part III: Reflections & Recommendations 

humans focus on what they uniquely 
contribute?” 
A hidden liability is the human-tendency to take 
thinking shortcuts and to over-rely on AI as a 
sage. AI systems are designed to be agreeable 
and to o�er certainty, rather than humility. 
They reflect the human biases inherent to their 
training data. When human cognitive shortcuts 
combine with AI’s biases and pleasing the 
results can be disastrous. Leaders must be 
eyes wide open about the way in which AI 
counteracts intellectual humility and feeds 
over confidence, by design. 
Arguably, critical thinking is eroding in our 
society and it's quite possible that AI will 
contribute to that erosion. We’ve had decades 
of greater focus on developing deep domain 
expertise that perhaps has come at the 
expense of synthesis and polymathic thought. 
These are critical areas of capability 
development that we think will be needed in 
the AI age. 
While the consideration of which tools, which 
use cases, and what governance do we need 
in AI implementation is valid, we must not 
forget about the human and relational 
components that are foundational to realizing 
AI’s value. 
18 | Part III: Reflections & Recommendations 

19 | Leading Through Convergence: In Closing 
Leading Through Convergence: 
In Closing 
The convergence of technological, 
workforce, and geopolitical disruption is 
stress-testing every organization. Those that 
emerge stronger will be those that build 
genuine adaptive capacity—grounded in 
intellectual humility, expressed through new 
work paradigms, and practiced through 
thoughtful integration of AI as a relational 
entrant. Many of the leaders we spoke with 
are already thinking this way. This report is 
o�ered in the spirit of sharing peer insights 
and our own thought-leadership for the 
benefit of CEOs and leaders navigating 
similar challenges. 
About Relations Research 
Relations Research blends engineering rigor with 
human science to help organizations thrive in 
fast-changing market conditions. 
We are innovators in methodologies and technologies for 
designing, managing, and measuring stakeholder 
relationships and leading stakeholder-driven transformations. 
(470) 532-1045 
info@relationsresearch.com 
3379 Peachtree Road NE • Suite 700 • Atlanta, GA 30326 
All Rights Reserved. No copying or distribution without written consent. 
Q1 2026 v1.0