Organizations everywhere are investing in AI, but are they getting anything meaningful back?
Speaking at the HR Leaders Global People Analytics Summit, Jeni Fitzpatrick, North Highland's Chief People and Technology Officer, challenged leaders to look beyond adoption metrics and focus on what really matters: helping people make better decisions, solve problems faster and continue learning in a world that's changing by the day.
Below are her top five takeaways:
One of Jeni's strongest messages was that AI should support human judgment, not replace it. As new tools become more powerful, there's a growing temptation to accept answers without questioning where they came from or whether they make sense. .
"The temptation is to let the AI tell us what it's saying and to forfeit the cognitive engagement. The approach we're taking is: How do we get people to still choose to understand more?”
For Jeni, curiosity, critical thinking and judgment are becoming more, not less important in the AI era.
Many organizations are focused on how many people are using AI tools. Jeni argued that's the wrong place to start. Using a tool doesn't automatically create value. The real question is whether work is improving because of it.
"Value realization comes from: Is it changing how we're working? Are we making decisions that are better? Are we making those better decisions faster?"
In other words, success isn't measured by what AI is doing. It's measured by what people can do because of it.
When people say they don't have time to adapt, Jeni points to a recent example:
"[During the pandemic] we proved that overnight, all of us can change the way we work, the technology we use and the fact that we're on this meeting virtually from all the places we're in. We did that at such speed."
What's often holding people back is a desire for certainty, not a lack of capability. Change has never arrived with a complete instruction manual, and AI won't either.
Jeni believes one of the biggest responsibilities leaders have right now is making learning visible. That means being willing to experiment, sharing what works, and being honest when something doesn't.
"That's senior leaders sharing their screen, showing what they're trying and being vulnerable enough to say, 'I didn't understand how this worked, but I tried this.'"
Rather than chasing every new tool, she encourages leaders to start with a simple question:
"What tool, what moment, what problem?"
The goal isn't to use AI for the sake of using AI. It's to solve real problems better than before.
As organizations gain access to more data and stronger insights, Jeni sees an opportunity for HR and technology leaders to play a bigger role in business decision-making.
"The opportunity for us as HR leaders and technology leaders is to lead and to not see our role as presenting some really interesting information that we hope somebody does something with."
She closed with a challenge that neatly summed up her perspective on leadership in the AI era:
"We need to isolate the business problem it's identified and decide: What should we do about it? And I am prepared to be the 'we' in that sentence."
At a time when many organizations are focused on the technology itself, Jeni's message was a reminder that competitive advantage still comes from people.
The organizations that win won't be the ones with the most AI tools. They'll be the ones that use those tools to ask better questions, make better decisions and take action when it matters.