The Hidden Driver of Workforce Polarization

Amy Bernstein

November 30, 2025

We recently published an article that’s really stuck with me. Partly because the piece examines the surprising role that moral philosophy plays in the workplace and partly because I keep seeing its surprising premise borne out.

Titled “The Hidden Driver of Workforce Polarization”, the article argues that polarization over such issues as migration, climate, reproductive rights is not actually an expression of the disagreements between the political left and right. Rather, say Namrata Goyal of Esade Business School and Krishna Savani of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, polarization is rooted deeply in the differences between moral absolutists and moral relativists. Moral absolutists come down hard against any practice they deem immoral, while moral relativists are open to exceptions to practices they deem immoral. Critically, note the authors, both absolutists and relativists sit all along the political spectrum.

Because the differences that arise from this division over such questions as sustainability policies, return-to-office rules, and corporate activism are often treated as left-versus-right problems, the corporate responses are usually ineffective. The authors encourage us use the moral lens to diagnose the trouble, shift the conversation from “who’s right” to “how we decide,” and to build decision processes that give both absolutists and relativists a fair hearing.

They also caution against three common practices when devising the response:

• Over-relying on facts and data. Absolutists rarely shift their stance when core values are at stake, and “data dumps” can backfire.
• Labeling employees politically. This short-circuits deeper understanding and can alienate both sides.
• Forcing premature compromise. Pushing for middle-ground solutions before acknowledging absolutists’ non-negotiable values often erodes trust.

Goyal and Savani argue that this approach should be a relief to leaders who’ve struggled in the past with workplace polarization. “The good news is that recognizing this divide frees leaders from a false choice,” they write. “Collaboration does not require changing people’s politics. It requires navigating the rigidity-flexibility spectrum in moral reasoning.”

***

Thanks for reading,

The post The Hidden Driver of Workforce Polarization appeared first on Harvard Business Impact.

Solution

Level Up

Accelerate your leadership. Turn midlevel talent into strategic impact.

What is Level Up

Level Up is Harvard Business Impact’s targeted leadership development experience for midlevel leaders. These are the people who drive your business forward every day — and they need development that reflects the complexity of their role. They need time-efficient, practical support that fits their reality and drives results.

Level Up builds core leadership capabilities through immersive, bite-size learning tied directly to the work. It’s smart, fast, and made for leaders under pressure to both perform and transform. It helps them rise above the day-to-day grind and make real impact.

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“The participants have been so expressive in sharing their feedback about the program. It’s clear to see that this has met a real need and made a real impact on our business.”

Nichole Synder, Director, Talent & Organizational Development
Charles Schwab

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Midlevel Leaders: The Bridge to Your Organization’s Future

In our global survey of 600 midlevel and senior leaders, one thing was clear: expectations are rising, but support isn’t keeping pace.

To keep midlevel leaders from buckling under the weight of modern demands, organizations must rethink how they develop and support them. It’s not just about individual skills—it’s about building a system around them that unlocks performance and transformation.

Explore the four foundational conditions—autonomy, empowerment, psychological safety, and recognition—that help midlevel leaders thrive under pressure.

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Climbing the High Summits: Why Every Leader Must Master Human Skills to Get the Most Out of AI

Diane Belcher

November 10, 2025

At Machu Picchu’s Sun Gate, a clear view of the citadel can vanish in minutes. Skies that seem calm turn quickly into downpours, leaving the path slick with rain and the descent treacherous. Those prepared for the unpredictable weather are glad to have their rain jackets, but gear alone is not enough. What makes the difference is the ability to adapt and stay resilient as conditions change.

Today’s organizations are climbing into their own unpredictable conditions, an era of relentless disruption, technological advances, data security threats, volatile markets, and geopolitical risk. Within view is an unprecedented capability to reimagine strategy, accelerate performance, and unlock value at scale and speed. But reaching the summit requires something more than high-tech gear.

It requires every member of the organization—from the CEO and C-suite to managers, frontline teams, and technical experts—to master the complementary human strengths that no machine can replace. In the face of unexpected turns, humans bring a kind of adaptability, judgment, and creativity that technology can’t yet match. And it’s these capabilities that make the difference between stalling short of the peak and reaching it.

The Gear Is Critical, but It’s Not the Guide

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the modern expedition’s gear: precise, powerful, and more functional than anyone could have imagined only a few years ago. But the gear is not the guide.

The guide’s role is to read the mountain, adjust the route to conditions, set the pace, make safety-critical decisions, and ensure the team’s resources, skills, and morale are all there. Teamwork and resilience make all the difference, just as in business. Rapid, continuous change exhausts even very capable workforces. Leading through it takes leaders with strong social and emotional intelligence, the ability to create psychological safety, and a genuine interest in people’s well-being.

The most successful AI adoption comes from a distributed leadership model. The CEO sets the tone and embeds AI into the business strategy, but the chief information officer, chief operating officer, functional heads, and line managers must all take responsibility for integrating AI into workflows, decision making, and customer experiences. Without that shared commitment, AI doesn’t get scaled to its full potential.

That’s why AI literacy for everyone matters too. Ensuring that every team member understands both AI’s capabilities and its blind spots helps them know when to trust the model and when to trust their instincts. In a truly AI-enabled organization, frontline employees aren’t just end users. Instead, they’re active contributors who spot risks, surface opportunities, and feed insights back into the system.

Reading the Signs Machines Can Miss

Even in clear weather, strong leaders question assumptions, reassess the plan, and prepare alternatives. They look for hazards the map can’t show and act before those hazards become crises. When crises do occur, they size up the problem with a sense of proportion and draw on their creativity to improvise solutions when necessary.

Just as in business, leaders must cultivate integrative thinking, which is the ability to hold competing perspectives, connect dots across functions, and generate new paths forward. As research from Harvard Business School has shown, the strongest creative ideas often emerge when humans and machines work together, combining human originality with AI’s ability to refine ideas and test their feasibility. This is what turns AI potential into transformative capabilities.

The Partnership That Gets You to the Top…and Back Home

The most successful digital transformation strategies rely on constant coordination between people and technology. Despite detailed plans, it’s the team who decides when to deviate to avoid danger, preserve energy, or seize an unexpected break in the weather.

For high-performing organizations, the C-suite, product leads, operations managers, legal teams, human resources departments, engineers, customer-facing teams, analysts, and even administrative staff learn to collaborate with AI tools in ways that elevate both their work and the organization’s overall performance.

Leading at Extreme Altitude

The companies that succeed won’t just be the ones with the most advanced AI tools. They’ll be the ones that have deliberately elevated the human capabilities that give those tools purpose and given everyone a role in finding new ways forward.

They will:

• Enhance human strengths, developing emotional intelligence, ethical judgment, resilience, creativity, and integrative thinking in every role.
• Build widespread AI literacy, so every employee can partner effectively with AI.
• Share ownership of creating the organization’s future, engaging the leadership team and broader workforce in seeking ideas to leverage AI, not isolating it within a single function.

Reaching the summit involves building a digitally literate workforce, whose human capabilities have also been sharpened. When leaders at every level champion these complementary elements, the organization doesn’t just climb higher, it becomes more capable of navigating whatever terrain lies ahead.

The post Climbing the High Summits: Why Every Leader Must Master Human Skills to Get the Most Out of AI appeared first on Harvard Business Impact.

Are You Managing—or Teaching?

Amy Bernstein

October 31, 2025

This month I want to consider the issue of micromanagement. As leaders, we’re told not to get too involved in the nitty-gritty of day-to-day operations. If we’re too controlling, if we monitor too closely, we run the risk of destroying trust with our teams and crushing their motivation.

This all rings true to me. One the hardest things about becoming a leader was learning to pull myself out of the everyday details so that I could focus on the big-picture stuff—vision, strategy, resource allocation, and so forth. Let others think about process—right?

Maybe not.

Scott Cook, cofounder of Intuit, and Nitin Nohria, former dean of Harvard Business School, studied four of the world’s top-performing companies—Amazon, Danaher, RELX, and Toyota—and made a discovery. At these companies, they write in “The Surprising Success of Hands-On Leaders,” the most senior leaders “spend an inordinate amount of time…architecting the day-to-day methods of execution in ways that set the standard and teach others to do work well.”

They’re not micromanaging. These leaders are teaching and modeling behaviors, Cook and Nohria write, with the goal of building “a system that performs reliably even when they’re not in the room.”

That’s a worthy goal, by any definition of leadership.

***

Thanks for reading,

The post Are You Managing—or Teaching? appeared first on Harvard Business Impact.

• Organizational Transformation

Transforming Leadership and Culture Through Scalable Development at SITA

SITA partnered with Harvard Business Impact to scale leadership development and drive cultural change.

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Challenge

The challenge: A bold vision demands cultural change

SITA, a global leader in air transport communications and IT, stood at a crossroads. It was 2022 and newly appointed CEO, David Lavorel, set out a bold $2-billion growth vision. To achieve it, SITA needed more than operational excellence—it needed to evolve its culture, centered around the corporate values of “Step up for the customer,” “Dare to grow,” “Try fast / fail fast,” and “Do it together,” while also establishing leadership practices to meet the demands of a rapidly changing industry.  

The challenge was to revamp leadership practices across the organization—strengthening management maturity and equipping employees to connect their day-to-day work with SITA’s vision and long-term strategy.

The organization focused on: 

• Driving cultural transformation led by a new CEO and refreshed corporate values 
• Evolving management approaches and modernizing leadership practices 
• Building leadership capabilities across all levels

Partnership

The partnership: Leadership development for organizational transformation

Championing change under the leadership of Chief People Officer Alina Ionescu and driven by Ismail Albaidhani, Director of Talent and Organizational Capabilities, SITA embarked on a learning and development journey grounded in transformation and measurable impact. To accelerate this journey, SITA partnered with Harvard Business Impact, to expand leadership development across the organization.

SITA categorizes its talent into four groups: 

• Early-career professionals 
• People managers 
• High-potential leaders
• Transformation leaders (Executives and their direct reports) 

Starting with its people managers, SITA utilized Harvard ManageMentor® to scale leadership development efforts from 50 to 250 participants—empowering more leaders to drive cultural change, align strategy and deliver impact faster across the business. Courses like Strategic Thinking, Career Management, Digital Intelligence, and Feedback Essentials were delivered in the flow of work and aligned with business cycles like goal setting. 

SITA also embedded Harvard ManageMentor into the development plans of 150 high-potential leaders, tailoring the experience to their psychometric profiles and growth goals. Transformation leaders—requiring greater flexibility—engaged with content from Harvard ManageMentor Spark, allowing them to access insights when and how it best suited their schedules.

To strengthen these approaches, SITA leveraged Harvard Business Impact’s Momentum Portfolio—a flexible suite of learning experiences that combines digital content, live sessions, and curated pathways for both scalability and relevance. Throughout the journey, the Momentum Portfolio stood out as a key differentiator, with a big highlight on the use of Perspective Builder workshops. 

Perspective Builder workshops are facilitated sessions designed to help learners explore diverse viewpoints, challenge assumptions, and apply new leadership concepts to real-world challenges. Delivered in both in-person and virtual formats, these workshops were paired with digital modules to create a hybrid learning experience. This combination allowed participants to engage in dynamic discussions, peer-to-peer learning, and immediate feedback, while still benefiting from the flexibility of on-demand resources.

Transformation

The transformation: Shifts in culture and leadership behavior backed by results

SITA’s transformation was rooted in a bold vision—one that demanded not just operational change, but a cultural and behavioral shift across the organization. That transformation was visible in how managers began embracing coaching, feedback, and stronger strategic alignment to build a culture of accountability across the organization. Completion of performance reviews reached record highs, while employee engagement scores rose. 

Learners responded enthusiastically to the relevance and accessibility of the learning experiences. Badges and certificates were widely shared, signaling pride and progress. One standout example came from Swen van Klaarbergen, a director of product management at SITA, who credited the Generative AI course in Harvard ManageMentor with helping him navigate current real-world challenges—underscoring the program’s practical value. 

The transformation was not just about implementing new tools—it was about enhancing how leaders think, act, and empower their teams to succeed. 

“[Leading with Generative AI] has been one of the most valuable courses in our management program—highly relevant to what we’re implementing today . . . the course added fresh perspectives to my personal ‘toolkit’.”

Swen van Klaarbergen, Director of Product Management
SITA

Impact

The impact: Showing up in numbers and sentiment

With structured development, SITA’s managers adopted a new leadership mindset—goal setting became directly tied to strategic priorities, coaching emerged as a core behavior across teams, and leaders began connecting individual contributions to company-wide values. This impact was visible in both behavior and metrics: 

• Scaled leadership development from 50 to 250 managers
• 99.9% performance review completion rate
• 13-point increase in employee engagement vs the transitional norm
• 7% improvement in confidence in leadership from 2024 to 2025

Managers applied new skills in real time, reinforced through Harvard ManageMentor courses and internal support. Feedback grew more consistent, development conversations more intentional, and leadership practices more aligned.

“I was thrilled when I first heard about the Harvard ManageMentor program. It felt like SITA had taken a significant step forward in prioritizing employee development.” 

Saeed Suleiman, Regional Customer Success Leader, Saudi Arabia
SITA

Future

The future: Looking ahead and building skills for tomorrow

To sustain momentum, SITA’s CEO, Chief People Officer, and Chief Financial Officer are sponsoring a new strategic skills initiative. The goal is to prepare leaders for the future by cultivating capabilities beyond core management—such as leveraging generative AI and driving digital transformation. 

The next phase will extend leadership development further across early-career talent and senior transformation leaders, ensuring a future-ready workforce. Through its partnership with Harvard Business Impact, SITA is not just training leaders—it is building a leadership culture capable of powering bold growth and innovation for years to come.

“I think that Harvard Business Impact now plays a role, not just as a solution for a specific talent development, but as a solution for strategic skills across SITA overall.”

Ismail Albaidhani, Director of Talent and Organizational Capabilities
SITA

The post Transforming Leadership and Culture Through Scalable Development at SITA appeared first on Harvard Business Impact.

Full-Immersion Learning: Building Confident and Capable Leaders

Abbey Lewis

October 13, 2025

When you land in a new city, a familiar challenge emerges—how do you see, taste, and experience the most in the little time you have?

For every city, there are hundreds of guides and itineraries, each promising the “best” way to explore. Following one offers structure but also keeps you on rails, walking someone else’s path rather than discovering your own. The experience offers an easier way to explore, but it falls short of being truly transformative.

The alternative is immersion: stepping into the streets, wandering without a script, and experiencing the city in its true state. In those unplanned moments—trying local food, navigating side streets, asking strangers for directions, you begin to understand the city as it really is.

Leadership development is no different. Leaders must master new skills faster than ever. Yet they identify lack of time as the single greatest barrier to mastery. To make the most of scarce time, organizations must shift from traditional learning methods to full-immersion learning.

Full-immersion learning places leaders in business-relevant contexts such as simulations, role play, or real-world challenges where they apply knowledge in real time. It is experiential, contextual, and designed for speed, engagement, retention, and confidence. Among the most effective forms are practice-first learning and action learning projects, which demonstrate how immersion accelerates both skill and impact.

Practice-First Learning: Learning by Doing

Arriving in a new city can feel overwhelming. There are countless streets to explore and hundreds of foods to try. Reading a guidebook may help, but you won’t know which meals you love until you taste them. By exploring first, you discover the city through your own senses—and then deepen your understanding with research.

Practice-first learning creates the same effect in business. Instead of starting with abstract instruction, employees engage directly with real work challenges, experiment, and learn by doing. They recognize their own gaps as they encounter obstacles, then reinforce their knowledge with the applicable research-based concepts. The results are higher engagement, faster skill development, and greater confidence—addressing the issues of low engagement in traditional learning.

Action Learning Projects: Building Skills While Driving Results

When you travel with a group, everyone has different priorities. One person hunts for the best food, another searches for history, and someone else wants art and culture. Without alignment, the group risks a fragmented journey.

Leaders and their teams face the same challenge. Action learning projects solve it by anchoring development in real business issues. Each member brings a different lens, but together they apply knowledge, solve problems, and drive outcomes that matter. The learning is immediate, motivating, and efficient. Skills grow at the same pace as results.

Research confirms this; immersive, contextual, team-based learning doesn’t just accelerate development, it also fuels innovation.

From Wrong Turns to Real-Time Feedback

Even in the best-designed learning experiences, leaders need feedback to know where they stand. Without it, they risk repeating mistakes or overlooking gaps. It’s much like exploring a new city; you may order a dish that looks appealing but doesn’t match your taste. In the process, you learn something new about your preferences.

One of the most persistent challenges in leadership development is identifying and addressing individual skill gaps. Artificial intelligence (AI) now provides the real-time feedback loop leaders have long been missing. By analyzing performance, it not only highlights the gaps but also delivers feedback that is immediate and contextual. Paired with immersive learning methods, AI accelerates the cycle of practice, feedback, and adjustment, enabling leaders to close gaps faster and with greater confidence.

Bottom Line

Travel reminds us that the richest experiences often come when we choose to immerse ourselves in our environment. The meals you remember, the neighborhoods you love, and the insights you carry home come from stepping off the itinerary and plunging into the life of the city.

Immersive learning delivers the same depth in the workplace. When leaders learn in real contexts, it accelerates skill development, fuels engagement, and builds confidence. Leaders are better equipped to apply new skills in ways that spark innovation.

As Harvard Business School’s Ranjay Gulati argues, now is the moment for organizations to lead with courage. By diving into learning head-on and embracing risk, they build leaders with the practical skills to thrive in disruption.

At Harvard Business Impact, we deliver innovative and immersive learning through HBR Spark, combining world-class content, AI-driven personalization, and hands-on experiences such as leadership labs to accelerate growth and performance.  In our blended learning experiences, leaders engage in immersive learning through simulations, business impact projects, and other high-touch methods that connect your business challenges directly and drive meaningful impact.

Full-immersion learning is not just about acquiring new skills—it’s also about transforming leaders into the innovators of the future.

The post Full-Immersion Learning: Building Confident and Capable Leaders appeared first on Harvard Business Impact.

Reinforcing Organizational Bridges: Four Elements That Strengthen Midlevel Leaders

Jeff Pacheco

October 1, 2025

Bridges don’t collapse overnight—they weaken in silence. Once-impassible valleys and rivers are crossed without a thought, carried by structures so reliable we forget what it took to build them. Yet, every bridge demands vision, resources, precise engineering, and ongoing maintenance. For a bridge to endure, every part must work together. If one part falters, the integrity of the whole bridge is threatened.

As we discussed in a previous perspective paper, midlevel leaders are those bridges—spanning the gap between strategy and execution, linking senior leadership’s vision to daily realities. They carry the weight of transformation, unite teams, and keep the structure intact under pressure. But like any bridge, their strength depends on deliberate construction, reinforcement, and support.

Four Elements That Support the Success of Midlevel Leaders

Midlevel leaders are operating under immense pressure. They are expected to deliver results, lead transformation, and keep teams engaged—all while navigating shifting priorities and constant change. When the structural supports they rely on are missing, that pressure strains their capacity to perform. Agility erodes, execution suffers, and burnout accelerates, putting both short-term performance and long-term transformation at risk.

Our research at Harvard Business Impact Enterprise identifies four structural elements essential to midlevel leader strength: autonomy, empowerment, psychological safety, and recognition. Each is as vital as any beam or cable in a bridge—remove one and the entire structure is at risk.

• Autonomy: Autonomy enables midlevel leaders to act decisively, adapt quickly, and drive innovation. Entrusting them with meaningful decision making strengthens the critical link between strategy and execution. In our research, midlevel leaders who reported having autonomy showed a nearly one-third increase—rising to 62%—in effectiveness at demonstrating agility and adaptability in fast-changing environments.
• Empowerment: Empowerment means giving midlevel leaders the resources, authority, and confidence to act. This requires intentional effort from senior leaders—investing in training, fostering clear communication, and including midlevel leaders in strategic decision making. The payoff is clear: Empowered midlevel leaders are stronger at supporting transformation and better equipped to influence, execute, and sustain momentum.
• Psychological safety: Harvard Business School’s Amy Edmondson defines psychological safety as a shared belief that it’s safe to take risks and express ideas without fear of negative consequences. It grows from clear, predictable, and fair expectations paired with open communication. In our research, nearly seven in 10 midlevel leaders who felt psychologically safe reported meeting goals and expectations—compared to just 43% of those who didn’t. This freedom fuels engagement, sparks experimentation, generates new ideas, and fosters a culture of curiosity and smart risk taking.
• Recognition: Recognition keeps midlevel leaders grounded in purpose and value. When their contributions are acknowledged consistently, it reinforces their commitment and resilience under pressure. Our research showed the difference is measurable—weekly burnout rates dropped from 80% to 66% when midlevel leaders felt recognized by senior leadership. Recognition isn’t a courtesy; it’s a stabilizing force that sustains engagement, strengthens commitment, and helps leaders perform at their best even in challenging conditions.

Like engineering a bridge, each structural element has its own value and measurable impact. But true strength comes when every part works in unison. For midlevel leaders, it’s the combination of these supports that enables them to perform at their best, sustain momentum, and lead the organization forward under any conditions.

Inspecting the Bridge: Stress Testing Your Midlevel Leadership

Even the most impressive bridge must prove its strength before being opened for use. Engineers test every joint, cable, and beam to confirm they meet standards, can bear the bridge’s load, and will endure. Organizations must do the same with their midlevel leadership.

An initial “inspection” means systematically evaluating their performance against the four structural elements and, just as critically, assessing how well the organization supports them. Measurement reveals strengths, exposes stress points, and directs resources where they have the most impact.

But inspections aren’t a one-and-done exercise and often surface evolving needs. In our study, nearly 60% of midlevel leaders pointed to three areas they needed more support in for their success: greater decision-making authority, stronger work-life balance, and more efficient technologies. Addressing these requires more than periodic check-ins; it also calls for continuous feedback loops. Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis call this making feedback a team habit by embedding smart intentional questions into meetings to solicit a steady stream of insights from midlevel leaders.

Build the Bridges That Carry Your Business Forward

A bridge is only as strong as the investment in its design, construction, and upkeep. The same is true for midlevel leaders. Strengthening their autonomy, empowerment, psychological safety, and recognition produces higher engagement, lower burnout, and greater innovation. These leaders become catalysts—driving transformation, connecting strategy to execution, and sustaining momentum through change.

Neglect midlevel leaders and cracks will appear under pressure. With consistent investment, midlevel leaders become the reliable, resilient structures that carry an organization from where it is today to where it must go tomorrow. The future of your organization depends on the bridges you build now.

The post Reinforcing Organizational Bridges: Four Elements That Strengthen Midlevel Leaders appeared first on Harvard Business Impact.

The Leader’s Agenda

Your monthly briefing on what matters most to today’s executives

A Newsletter Designed for Visionary Leaders

Each month, The Leader’s Agenda brings together curated thought leadership from Harvard Business Impact, real-world strategies from global executives, and future-focused trends shaping business.

Authored by Amy Bernstein, Editor in Chief at Harvard Business Review, The Leader’s Agenda is designed for C-suite leaders who value relevance, clarity, and impact.

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About the Author

Amy Bernstein, Editor in Chief at Harvard Business Review

Read the Latest Edition – November 30, 2025

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The Hidden Driver of Workforce Polarization

Explore how to use the moral lens to diagnose the trouble, shift the conversation from “who’s right” to “how we decide,” and to build decision processes that give both absolutists and relativists a fair hearing.

Read now

The post The Leader’s Agenda appeared first on Harvard Business Impact.

The Leader’s Guide to Strategic Thinking

Amy Bernstein

September 30, 2025

We recently asked you what topics you’d like us to cover in The Leader’s Agenda, and among the answers was the request for guidance on becoming a better strategic thinker. Given that many organizations are dealing with profound challenges to their strategies right now, I can’t imagine a timelier topic. Here are a few thoughts that I hope you’ll find valuable.

First, understand what strategy really is—and what it’s not. There’re are countless explanations out there (we’ve published many of them), but the one I return to comes from Felix Oberholzer-Gee of Harvard Business School. He says, “Strategy is a plan to create value.” Important note: A strategy is not the same as a plan, as former Rotman dean Roger Martin has noted.

Knowing what strategy is doesn’t make you a strategic thinker, however. Strategic thinkers are characterized by their ability to take a future-focused view of their organization and the shifting context in which it operates, and they make decisions proactively to strengthen their organization’s competitive advantage. They tend to be comfortable with uncertainty and they ask smart questions.

The most successful strategic thinkers excel at certain skills and behaviors, says Rich Horwath, the founder and CEO of the Strategic Thinking Institute. In “How to Become a Better Strategic Thinker,” he lays out the areas that you should focus on developing:

1. Acumen, or how you think. This has three core components: context awareness, insight and innovation.
2. Allocation, or how you plan. This area includes how you focus resources, make decisions, and work to achieve competitive advantage.
3. Action, or what you do. The three components are collaboration, execution, and personal performance.

The bigger point here is that we can all learn to become better strategic thinkers. That’s good news for anyone working to drive a strategic transformation.

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We want to make The Leader’s Agenda as useful to you as possible, so any feedback you may have will be invaluable to us. What are your top concerns? What sort of insight would be most helpful to you? Please share your thoughts here.

Thanks for reading,

The post The Leader’s Guide to Strategic Thinking appeared first on Harvard Business Impact.

• Organizational Culture

Cultivating Future-Ready Talent to Foster Growth at Grupo Salinas

The post Cultivating Future-Ready Talent to Foster Growth at Grupo Salinas appeared first on Harvard Business Impact.

Amplifying with AI: L&D’s Role in Scaling Collective Intelligence

Mark Marone, PhD

September 9, 2025

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to automate anything that can be measured, revolutionizing how work gets done. Even if AI innovation stalled today, the disruption would continue. That gives learning and development (L&D) leaders two urgent tasks: to help people use AI effectively and to use AI to enhance how people learn.

Business today demands learning that is faster, more personalized, and deeply contextualized. That’s where AI comes in. In a recent Harvard Business Review article by Marc Zao-Sanders that methodically ranks 100 current use cases for generative AI, both “enhanced learning” and “personalized learning” feature among the top 20.

This work of L&D today is critical. By combining AI’s capacity to scale insight with L&D’s ability to shape behavior, organizations can build their collective intelligence: the dynamic interplay between people and machines that enables smarter decisions, innovation, and better performance at scale.

The Amplification Imperative

According to Harvard Business Impact’s 2025 Global Leadership Development Study, 49% of L&D leaders expect AI to improve talent development outcomes this year. Even more expect it to enhance the scalability (50%) and adaptability (53%) of learning programs.

That promise is already being realized. Consider how Hilton Hotels rolled out an AI-powered virtual reality training program for front desk staff. Employees interact with a Guest Service Coach that delivers real-time feedback on tone, word choice, and service behaviors. What used to take four hours of instructor-led training now takes just 20 minutes, and the program has scaled to over 400,000 employees globally.

This kind of amplification is exactly what many organizations need, but speed and efficiency aren’t enough. The deeper value lies in AI’s ability to help organizations codify and share internal expertise, personalize development pathways, and create learning systems that adapt alongside the business and help it grow.

Three Ways AI is Already Amplifying Learning

1. Contextualized Knowledge at Scale

AI tools powered by internal data are helping organizations unlock and distribute tacit knowledge. For example, large language models can be trained on internal policies, playbooks, and best practices, enabling employees to ask context-specific questions and receive curated answers grounded in the organization’s way of working.

A multinational firm interviewed in our study represents a typical example. It deployed an AI coach that understands company values, ethical guidelines, and leadership principles, then delivers tailored coaching to first-time managers. This kind of amplification by AI is allowing organizations to streamline the work of middle managers and flatten organizational hierarchies.

2. Personalized and Proactive Learning

In contrast to traditional training calendars, AI-powered systems can push microlearning or feedback precisely when and where it’s needed. Leaders can receive just-in-time nudges before key meetings. Teams can be prompted to reflect on recent challenges. Learners can navigate personalized development journeys based on evolving role requirements, skill gaps, and performance trends.

3. Learning Embedded in Workflows

The best learning doesn’t feel like training at all. AI makes it possible to integrate development directly into the flow of work, offering real-time guidance, simulations, and decision aids. Instead of stepping away to learn, employees learn as they work. This not only increases relevance and retention but also addresses one of the biggest barriers to learning: lack of time. Instead of logging in to a portal and searching for content, employees increasingly engage with intelligent assistants that deliver curated answers, personalized learning, and targeted support just when it’s needed.

Why Learning Needs to Lead

Right now, organizations need L&D as a strategic partner in developing collective intelligence to unlock the full potential of human-AI collaboration. Yet our study revealed an uncomfortable gap: only 36% of organizations believe their leaders fully embrace the mindset that AI must be central to strategy and operations. Just 42% describe their support for employee AI experimentation as strong.

Learning leaders have a critical role to play in helping to close these gaps. This includes not only helping leaders and employees become AI literate themselves, but also leading by example, incorporating AI into how learning is developed, delivered, and measured.

The most effective strategies blend AI’s precision with human insight, creating a loop where machine-generated guidance is continuously refined by people and returned to the system as collective intelligence. In this way, AI doesn’t just accelerate learning; it becomes part of a feedback loop that strengthens it.

The Learning Function as the Leverage Point

When business models, company workflows, and entire industries are being reshaped by intelligent machines, the ability to learn at scale becomes a competitive differentiator.

Amplifying learning with AI promises to increase the velocity and impact of learning across organizations. The challenge for learning leaders today isn’t whether to use AI, it’s how to use it well: ethically, strategically, and in the service of human growth as well as business growth.

With the guidance of talented L&D teams, AI can enable not just more learning, but better learning: learning that equips people to lead, adapt, and thrive in a fast, fluid, and future-focused world.

The post Amplifying with AI: L&D’s Role in Scaling Collective Intelligence appeared first on Harvard Business Impact.

• Organizational Transformation

Navigating Strategic Imperatives for L&D Success at NOV

The post Navigating Strategic Imperatives for L&D Success at NOV appeared first on Harvard Business Impact.