HR STRATEGY

A few months ago, Atlassian handed its hardest strategic question - how to survive the AI era - to its Chief People Officer. Not the CTO. Not a Chief AI Officer. ServiceNow, Zapier, and Lattice have all made the same call.

The reason: what actually stalls AI transformation isn't the technology. It's getting people to let go of what used to work, and rebuilding an organisation around a way of working nobody's done before. Suddenly, HR is the most important, influential seat in the room for navigating this shift.
That doesn't happen by accident. It asks for a new kind of people leader - one Shirley calls the People Designer. This is the critical opportunity to become the next generation of people leaders, with business impact like never before. Shirley unpacks what sets these leaders apart, and what hands them the keys to navigate the most meaningful workforce revolution of our time.

Key Themes / Takeaways
- Why AI transformation is a people problem before it's a technology problem - and why the CPO chair is increasingly where it lands.
- What sets People Designers apart: owning business impact, building instead of requesting, catching problems before they reach the room.
- The credibility test for the next generation of people leaders - you can't lead your company's transformation while your own function still runs on guesswork.