How AI Is Reshaping Leadership, Labour and Business Strategy

Entrepreneur

8 hours ago

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As one of today's most in-demand artificial intelligence speakers, his insights are helping reshape how organisations structure teams, implement emerging tech, and stay future-ready in an accelerating world.With a career spanning consultancy, public speaking, and executive coaching, Kieran advises businesses on building hybrid human–machine workforces, leading innovation, and mastering digital change. His no-nonsense approach to digital strategy has earned him a place among the UK's top technology speakers.
In this exclusive interview with Entrepreneur UK, Kieran shares practical lessons for future-fit leadership, the dangers of falling behind, and why forward-thinking organisations must act now. For anyone exploring the impact of AI on the workforce or seeking futurism speakers with real-world experience, Kieran offers unmatched clarity and vision.
With AI reshaping every aspect of modern business, how must leadership evolve to remain effective in a hybrid human–digital workforce?
They're still learning. There's lots of businesses, I think there's a great deal of FOMO out there, where everybody believes everybody else has raced ahead – and some have, and some haven't. But it really is a race, to a degree, to catch up and to learn. I think businesses are going to have to start to look at AI as being a core part of the strategy now.
We're talking about narrow AI in general – retention models, analytic models, next best action – but they're going to have to start looking at generative AI and see what part that plays in the construction of content, media, the analysis of the business. They're also now going to have to look at agentic AI, which is digital labour built on top of large language models that can actually take over a lot of the roles that particular staff members are doing.
Once you start looking at all of this we may be in a stage where we're very soon going to have not just human labour but a lot of digital labour built into a business. There's nothing unusual there – Amazon factories are full of it, lots of people have put agentic labour into workplaces already – but it leads to a different set of skills you need as a manager.
How I manage a person is very different than how I manage a robot - the performance metrics and the KPIs and the goals that I set, and the strategies that I put in place, they're all new skills that people need to learn, including AI. If AI is going to take on a huge proportion of work, then you could end up a headless organisation – like Uber – which basically means people are controlled by technology that's driving them, pointing in particular directions, allocating their next body of work.
What does that mean as you transition your workplace to that? What does it mean for your customers? If you look at Uber and some of the things that have come up against over the last number of years – have I decided policies that make up for some of technology's fragilities, or when it goes wrong? How am I going to learn all of this tech and manage my staff? There's so many questions that we are learning answers to. And not only that, if AI is going to do a lot of what we're doing, then how do we develop the skills that AI can't – the curiosity, the agility, the adaptability, the coaching and mentorship? How do I learn the data, the AI skills themselves? How do I learn critical and analytical thinking? Where do I know to use technology decision insight? How do I actually cooperate or co-compete with my previous competitors – cooperation or coopetition? How do I open drawbridges and cooperate in an increasingly intelligent and digital world? How do I plan for my new career or the new careers inside of businesses – like agentic AI architects, data strategists, generative AI content engineers or agentic labour leaders? How do I start to restructure my leadership team so my Chief HR Officer is now taking on the role of a Chief Technology Officer as well? How do I get people excited about new roles like an AI Network Optimisation Engineer? The world is moving and you need to move with it. You need to be very agile.
There's a lot of businesses and business leaders have to do to adjust their own learning, their own leadership model, the structure of their organisation – who does the work, be it digital or human labour. Get started now. It's not one thing, it's a whole host of things – but that's what makes life and business fun as well.
What are the foundational principles behind truly successful digital transformation efforts—and why do so many companies get it wrong?
The basic secret that nobody really talks about is never getting there in the first place. Businesses that tend to need to digitally transform have got themselves in a position where they're very analogue today.
But AI itself is an 80-year-old overnight success story. The term itself was invented in 1956, when a group of scientists went to Dartmouth in the US to recreate the human mind and body and faculties – and then discovered that they actually couldn't.
Some companies have got to build change as part of their system, innovation as part of their DNA, the willingness to be agile and try things and make mistakes. But if they're in that situation, then not suddenly having a digital transformation plan – then you really need to build that culture. They need to create a culture of continuous change, using AI or Gen AI or intelligent automation. They need to use Gen AI or other tools or techniques that's going to allow them to innovate and keep ahead of their competition.
But how do you create that culture going forward where change, innovation, creativity, intelligence, customer delivery – using digital channels – is continually evolving? There's not one secret but one imprtant one is don't fall back on the, "we'll just keep doing what we've always done" – because the world is moving too quickly, and it won't move around you. Get your tech, get your people, get your processes – get all those working together, and then create a flywheel that guaranteesyour success going forward.
Become a learning business but don't ever fall behind again – is the secret sauce.