Myth 1: Ai Is Transforming All Jobs at the Same Speed

By Al Adamsen | Future of Work Advisors

When it comes to artificial intelligence (Ai), a dangerous oversimplification is making its way into boardrooms and strategy sessions: the belief that Ai is transforming all jobs at the same speed and to similar magnitudes. It's not.

Despite this, assumptions of worker productivity gains are being made with little understanding of the true implications Ai is having on the very nature of work in specific job families. The reductions in force we're seeing in many organizations are thus adversely impacting the work experience of those who remain, and there are significant short, mid, and long-term costs to this.

To debunk the myth and move past it requires an appreciation of nuance that few leaders have the patience to understand. "We just gotta go," they say. While I appreciate that leaders have to move fast in a fast-moving world, the question arises: When making quick decisions that'll have big repercussions, what are you and your fellow leaders basing those decisions on? Hopefully, you're setting up a process that provides the insights and ideas that will enable wise decisions that will reduce risk and increase the probability that the decisions reap the desired return. Have you?

If such a process is set up, it'll undoubtedly address what I call the "dimensionality" of change. In essence, this means that change—for example, the impact of Ai—will be different in different job families, locations, regions, etc. Making broad assumptions does not appreciate this dimensionality. Particularly as we explore the impact Ai will have on humans at work, measuring, analyzing, and understanding the nuances down to the job family—if not the specific role itself—is critical.

Just as no two roles are identical in scope, creativity, or context, no two roles are experiencing Ai’s impact in exactly the same way. Some job families—like those in data entry, customer service, or legal review—are being changed quickly and significantly. Others, such as roles in the trades, healthcare, and business strategy, are experiencing a slower, more subtle evolution. In such roles, day-to-day tasks are evolving rather than their work disappearing.

This reality matters. Leaders must stop asking, "What jobs will Ai eliminate?" and start asking, "How is Ai reshaping work within each job family, and how can we build a sustainable, adaptable organization that leverages Ai while honoring the human experience of our employees?"

The Value of Dimensional Thinking

Dimensional thinking recognizes that organizational change is not simple. Sorry leader, your job is to deal with complexity. Dimensional thinking appreciates this complexity, works to understand it and, in turn, makes wise, well-informed decisions. With this in mind, from an executive level, there are four primary layers to consider when employing dimensional thinking:

• Task-level disruption: What specific tasks within a role or job family are being augmented, automated, eliminated, or otherwise changed by Ai?
• Human factors: How is Ai impacting humans at work? Is Ai elevating productivity and value or is it creating more work and noise?
• Contextual relevance: How do industry, geography, culture, and regulatory environments shape the pace and direction of change?
• Decision-making: Is there a cross-functional, leader decision-making process that uses timely, relevant, and actionable insight about Ai’s impact on the workforce?

While People Analytics and Talent Intelligence can provide valuable macro-level trends, the richest insights often come from the people actually doing the work. What a thought, right? Listening to and learning from frontline employees, team leads, and functional experts will reveal where the friction lies, what tools are helping, hindering, or simply not relevant, and what is believed to be most helpful moving forward.

What to Do Next

To navigate this complexity amidst ongoing external change, forward-thinking organizations are going beyond People Analytics, Workforce Planning, Talent Intelligence, and EX/Employee Listening strategies. They’re bringing these together to do the following:

• Conduct a Dimensional Analysis of the Workforce: Go beyond titles and headcount. Look at the tasks, tools, and team structures within and across job families. Identify where Ai can enhance, where it might hinder, and where new capabilities will be needed.
• Include Voices from Across the Organization: Top-down projections miss critical details. Invite employees at every level into the conversation. Create listening tours, cross-functional workshops, and/or use technology that captures employee perspectives and ideas on Ai—both how it's being experienced now as well as how it can be best experienced in the future.
• Use Job-Family-Level Insights to Guide Learning Investments: Training everyone on the same Ai tools or concepts is often wasteful. Instead, tailor learning pathways to each job family based on current tasks and future plans. Focus on both technical upskilling (Ai, agentic Ai, etc.) and human development (communication, creativity, decision-making, ethics, collaboration, etc.).
• Build Adaptive Ai Adoption Plans: Don’t bet the farm on a single tool or trend. Build flexible, test-and-learn strategies that let you pilot solutions in one area, measure impact, and scale thoughtfully.
• Honor Human Potential and Constraints: Not all people will learn at the same pace, adopt new tools with ease, or feel empowered by Ai. That's okay. Respect the human experience, offer support, and empower with empathy, patience, and persistence. Positive, productive people will find a way… at their own pace.

A Call for Conscious Leadership

In an era of exponential change, the speed of Ai adoption should never outpace the depth of human understanding. Leaders must embrace the dimensionality of work, of change, and of the human experience. This is required if leaders and leadership teams are going to create sustainable organizations that adapt and thrive over time.

We’re not facing a single future of work. We’re facing an infinite number of futures, each shaped, if not outright created, at the intersection of technology, humanity, and leadership.

To learn more about the other Myths click here.  And to learn how to assess your organization’s adaptive readiness and, in turn, build executive decision-making processes rooted in timely, relevant, and actionable insight, follow and connect with me here on LinkedIn.  Finally, be sure to subscribe to the Future of Work Advisors Newsletter.