You know it’s bad when people start counting people. They stop seeing the capital, the history, the context, the relationships in them. What’s left is an FTE, an Excel chart and a deadline for the HRBP.
In 2023 and 2024, we saw a brutal purge season of corporate safaris - which is still unravelling. Only this time the hunt was not for the weakest performers. The hunt was for cost. And cost - as we know - is most easily reduced when you fire a human being.
AI was supposed to make us no longer need humans. In practice, it made us start losing them before we learned how to work with AI.
In 2-3 years, the moment of truth will begin. It won’t be pretty.
We fired the wrong people
We fired those who were easiest to show on the slide. People from processes. People from operations. People who didn’t have ‘AI skills’ on their CV. But they had something much more valuable: informal knowledge of how the business works.
These were the people who knew which login was common to a system for millions. Which email really works in a crisis. Which KPIs were a fiction invented for audit purposes.
But the real festival of misunderstanding started when the UX/UI teams went under the axe. Designers. The people who have been the soul of digital transformation for the last few years. The same ones who, in constant dialogue with customers, research, processes and technology, built bridges between what the company dreamed up and what users really needed.
The layoffs of designers were one of the most grotesque moves of recent years.
Why? Because they were the first to understand how much AI would change the human-system relationship. How much the way people interact with products and services will need to be redesigned. How much people will need to be protected from stupid, incomprehensible, misconfigured AI fronts.
But in the corporate bottom line, it was easier to cut them out. ‘After all, AI will do the UX itself. After all, Midjourney will do the UI. Why do we need them?’
Why?
Well, so that in 2 years we don’t wake up with a UX nightmare generated by a prompt engineer who last saw the client in a stock photo in a presentation.
Dismissing UX/UI is not cutting costs. It is a head-cutting of corporate empathy. It is amputating the ability to understand people.
It is giving up an advantage that AI will not have for years to come: the ability to understand, feel, interpret the context and nuances of human behaviour.
We hired the wrong people
On the other hand - the AI Experts have arrived. Expensively dressed. Expensive certificates. Expensive buzzwords.
‘AI Centre of Excellence!’ ‘AI Governance Framework!’ ‘Prompt Engineering Academy!’
It all sounds good until you notice that most of these people don’t know your company, its people, its processes, its pathologies, its absurdities and its real operational life.
They are experts on trends. Not about your reality. The problem is not that we hired AI people. The problem is that we did it instead of developing those already inside.
We are the wrong people
The truth is painful. It is not AI that will replace us. It is our own attachment to an outdated management model that will eliminate us.
Management in many companies still operates with a mindset that suited 20th century industry. To linear production. To predictable patterns.
AI is changing the rules of the game
It does not seek perfection. It does not like stagnation. It does not tolerate unnecessary layers of decision-making.
AI rewards experimentation, speed, iteration. And it kills anything that blocks the flow of information.
Boards that cannot manage uncertainty will not survive not because AI is threatening. They will be lost because they are the last people not to understand it.
Learning to Uncontrol
(This part is inspired by Future of Jobs Report 2025: The jobs of the future – and the skills you need to get them.)
The greatest competence of the future is not knowledge of prompts. Nor is it knowledge of tools. It is the ability to design an environment where chaos is normal, not scary.
In which failure is built into the cost of learning. In which experimentation does not require 6 approvals. In which employees have the space to test, to play, to learn.
It’s not control that will give the edge. It is the speed of adaptation.
Competences that AI will not have (and you must have)
The future will not belong to those who “embrace AI”. The future will belong to those who embrace people living in an AI world. This is a subtle but crucial difference.
Because what is “managing unpredictability” in practice?
It’s not ‘let’s throw everyone into Miro and see what happens’ chaos. It is the ability to build an environment that will not fall apart when:
- the AI system returns an unpredictable result,
- a customer reacts completely differently than we anticipated,
- an employee starts using the tools in a way that no one in the company has described in procedure.
The competences of the future do not talk about controlling reality. They are about swimming in it.
About adapting faster than others. About the skills that will be the currency of survival in the AI era. And that is the real Learning to Uncontrol.
Resilience, flexibility and agility
Mental resilience. Being ready for the world to change the rules of the game in the middle of a turn. Not because it is malicious. It is because it can.
It is a leader who, instead of pushing the project with his knee to the old model, asks: “ok, what can we do differently?”.
Creative thinking
Not ‘creation on brief’. Creation when there is no brief. When you need to find a new path. Or reinventing a problem from scratch. Creative thinking in 2030 is the ability to ask the stupid questions that ultimately save the company.
Analytical thinking
Not ‘KPI analysis’. Analysis of the mechanics of reality. Understanding how the system works. What the dependencies are. Where something breaks when you add AI where people have never been.
Technological literacy
You don’t have to code. You need to know how to ask people who code. And how to understand the answers.
AI will be present everywhere. Your job will not be to know all the tools. Your job will be to know when the tools fail.
Empathy and active listening
Paradoxically - the more AI, the more there will be a need for ordinary, suboptimal, human conversation. With the customer. With an employee. With the team.
Empathy will not be a nice-to-have. It will be a condition for survival in a world that does not understand emotions.
Curiosity and lifelong learning
In the world of AI, the smartest don’t win. The most curious win. They are the ones who non-stop learn new things. Not because they have to. It’s because they can’t stop asking: “what if?”
Systems thinking
You are no longer managing people. You are managing systems of people + AI + processes + chaos. Seeing the connections, dependencies and side effects will be key.
Motivation and self-awareness
Technology will speed up everything. But if you don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing - you’ll burn out faster than the old servers in your basement.
Self-knowledge. The ability to stop. Checking your direction.
This will be the luxury of the future.
The most important thing will not be: who learned to promote ChatGPT first. What will be most important: who learned to build an environment where others want to experiment, get confused and come back for more.
Not AI will replace you. Not Gen Z will replace you. Not Marta from the billing team will replace you.
Your own resistance to change will replace you.
And it will be a very expensive exit interview.