Let’s be honest, most CHRO groups out there are bad. They are expensive, filled with vendor pitches, and loaded with “fluff” resources that are outdated by the time they are published. That’s why I put together Future of Work Leaders. A CHRO group for people leaders who are moving beyond traditional HR to focus on the future of work and employee experience. No pitches, no selling, no fluff.
The community is focused on discussions, candid Q&A sessions, and sharing of resources and insights. Members include Lego, Novartis, PwC, Saks Global, and dozens of others. I’m just in the process of planning our annual in-person forum which will be at the end of March. if you want to learn more and request an invite go to Future of Work Leaders or email me directly Jacob[at]thefutureorganization[dot]com.
Technology moves faster every day, yet organizational change is getting harder. It feels like a paradox. Companies have better tools and more data than ever, but people are more stressed and anxious about these changes. Susan Davies, EVP and CHRO of Markel, has seen this play out over a 40-year career. The world has shifted from paper cards to Artificial Intelligence, but the core challenge remains the same: the human element.
How can leaders maintain human connection while the machines handle the math? In this episode, Susan Davies shared how they’ve navigated this organizational transformation successfully and built resilience in an AI-driven world.
Listen to the episode here on Apple Podcast & leave a review!
The ABCS Framework for Strategic Change
The “mic drop” approach to leadership, announcing a massive shift and then retreating to the boardroom, is exactly how adoption spirals down in many companies.
While executives have often spent months internalizing a new strategy, employees are frequently expected to “jump to the other island” the moment a project launches. It shows an empathy gap, and it creates a dangerous “dip” in the change curve. It turns confusion into resistance, and people naturally drift back to old, comfortable habits.
To bridge this divide and ensure a strategy actually sticks, Susan shares that they utilize the ABCS Framework at Markel:
- Awareness: Move beyond a single PowerPoint; continuously paint a vivid “case for change” that provides clarity on the why.
- Buy-in: Acknowledge that commitment moves at different speeds, requiring empathetic influencing and, occasionally, tough conversations.
- Competence: Equipping the workforce with the specific skills and resilient behaviors needed to thrive in the new reality.
- Sustainability: Avoid the “mic drop” exit by providing ongoing reinforcement to ensure the new state becomes the permanent state.
During a big organizational change, you can’t just announce it to your people and hope for the best. Reinforce the new state to ensure people do not just walk back to their old habits. For CHROs, this framework is a structured roadmap, ensuring that transformation is not just launched, but lived.
Individual Accountability Is the New Job Security
For decades, the unspoken contract between employer and employee was almost parental: the company provided the ladder, and the employee simply had to climb it. But as Susan Davies points out, the speed of change today has rendered that “paternalistic” model obsolete.
AI can now rewrite a job description in the time it takes to finish a quarterly review. The most dangerous thing an employee can do is wait for a manager to hand them a development plan. Susan argues that the only true job security left is a “self-starter” mindset. This isn’t about “tough love” for its own sake; it’s about recognizing that professional growth is no longer a linear climb—it’s an agile series of pivots.
Real success now belongs to those who “look around the corner” to anticipate what’s coming and have the discipline to “unlearn” old habits just as fast as they acquire new ones. For CHROs, your role isn’t to be a parent, but to provide the “North Star” and the resources that allow people to reach their own potential.
If the reality of constant upskilling doesn’t excite an employee, it should probably concern them. Because in this new landscape, personal accountability is the only thing that keeps you from being left behind.
The Entry-Level Pipeline Risk
While most companies think AI will challenge their workforce, very few realize it may break their future. As organizations automate entry-level work, they are quietly removing the roles that used to train the next generation of leaders. Those early jobs were never just about output. They were where people built judgment, learned the business, and developed the instincts that no system can replicate.
Susan cautions against taking a short-term view here. While cutting these roles may improve efficiency today, it creates a structural gap tomorrow. Five years from now, the issue won’t be productivity; it will be a lack of people ready to step into leadership. And by the time that gap becomes visible, it’s already too late to fix.
But while individuals are expected to take more ownership than ever, organizations face a different risk. One that’s far less visible, but far more dangerous.
Listen to the episode here on Apple Podcast & leave a review!
Maintaining the Human in the Middle
As the world gets more obsessed with efficiency in this AI era, there is a growing risk that technology makes leaders lazy. It is tempting to replace the hard work of building relationships with the convenience of a pulse survey or a data dashboard, but as Susan Davies warns, you cannot automate trust. Especially in specialty businesses, the real competitive advantage isn’t the algorithm—it’s the “people-powered” connection that drives the brand.
That’s why Susan advocates for a “human-in-the-middle” approach to AI integration. AI should be used to kill the “blank sheet of paper” anxiety. For example, by leveraging tools like Co-pilot to handle the mundane, production-heavy parts of a job, their team at Markel is finally freed up to do what they do best: build relationships, offer empathy, and provide “real-time” guidance. For CHROs, the goal of AI integration isn’t to distance ourselves from the workforce, but to use efficiency as a bridge back to humanity.
Leading with Empathy Through the “Change Journey”
Leaders often fail to realize that by the time they announce a transformation, they have already “jumped to the other island”. Because executives spend months internalizing strategy, they forget their teams are just beginning the journey and are likely standing on the opposite shore, feeling the full weight of the change curve.
It takes empathy to lead in this time of change. Susan points out that leaders should be physically present to “take the pulse” of the organization. The “human interaction” of listening tours and focus groups matters just as much as managers acknowledging that ambiguity is stressful.
For CHROs, the priority must be coaching leaders to meet employees where they actually are, not where the boardroom wants them to be. By investing in a curriculum that treats “leaders as coaches,” organizations can bridge the distance between executive vision and the messy reality of human transition.
Conclusion: The Treadmill of Change
Companies don’t collapse under change because the strategy was wrong or the technology came too fast. They collapse in the space between intention and adoption, in the quiet moments where people feel unseen, unprepared, or left behind.
It all comes down to CHROs to make a choice. Every transformation asks the same question: Will you treat change as a rollout or as a human journey? Because the organizations that survive this era won’t be the ones with the smartest tools or the boldest announcements. They’ll be the ones that stay present long after the launch. The ones that understand that progress doesn’t happen when leaders “jump islands,” but when they walk people across, step by step.
As the world races toward automation, the real differentiator is surprisingly simple, and much harder to execute: Staying human, especially when it’s inconvenient.
If you want to see how this plays out in real leadership decisions, watch my full conversation with Susan Davies, where she shares how Markel navigates change, approaches AI, and keeps the human element at the center of it all.
Organizations around the world have lost their way. It’s time to get back to basics and focus on what really drives people and performance. This is why I’m so very excited to share that after 2 years of research and writing, my new book The 8 Laws of Employee Experience: How to Build a Future-Ready Organization is finally available. Grab a copy at 8exlaws.com
