LEADERSHIP

How AI rollouts quietly divide organisations, and how to design against it

In most organisations there are now people running agentic workflows and people who have never opened a paid AI tool. Often on the same team. Nobody decided this. But the gap compounds every week, because fluency earns access to better work, better projects and better reviews. AI is quietly creating a new line of inclusion and exclusion, and most organisations don't see it forming.

The distance is not caused by the pace of technology, and it won't be closed by another training session. It's a design question: who gets access, who gets time to learn, who gets permission to fail with something new, and whose role gets rethought rather than just loaded with tools. Soeren has spent two years advising People leaders on AI adoption and recently became Chief People Officer at HOLY, where he is building this right now.

He shares the model his organisation runs on: the root decisions about what stays human, the principles that make change feel safe rather than imposed, and the wiring into hiring, leveling and performance where fairness is either designed in or lost.