Tuesday, September 15, 2026
For years, companies have invested heavily in improving their operating systems.
ERP. Automation. Analytics. AI. Digital workflows. Supply-chain visibility. Performance dashboards.
But another operating system is under increasing pressure.
The human one.
The people who must learn the work. Develop judgment. Move between roles. Absorb new responsibilities. Adapt to new technology. Execute changing strategies. And somehow continue performing while almost everything around them is changing.
Three developments are beginning to collide.
AI is changing how people acquire experience.
Skills shortages increasingly coexist with underused talent already inside companies.
And employees are being asked to absorb more organizational change than traditional change-management systems were designed to handle.
Each issue deserves attention individually.
Together, they create a much larger leadership question:
If work is changing faster than people traditionally learned it, talent must move faster than organizational structures allow, and employees are already absorbing continuous change, has our leadership system evolved quickly enough?
That may become one of the defining people challenges of the next several years.
1. AI Is Compressing the Apprenticeship Ladder
The discussion about AI and employment is usually framed around jobs.
Which jobs disappear? Which jobs grow? Which tasks become automated? Which skills become more valuable?
Those are important questions.
But PwC’s 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer identifies another issue that deserves considerably more leadership attention.
AI may be changing how people become experienced.
PwC analyzed more than one billion job advertisements across 27 countries and territories and found that skills in highly AI-exposed roles are changing more than twice as rapidly as those in less-exposed occupations.
PwC — 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer
More importantly, the traditional entry-level career model is beginning to change.
Among 2.4 million U.S. entry-level jobs analyzed by PwC, highly AI-exposed junior positions were seven times more likely to require skills historically associated with more senior roles, including leadership and judgment. PwC also found that these increasingly “seniorised” entry-level positions had grown 35% since 2019 while other entry-level roles declined 10%.
That creates an interesting paradox.
Technology can make junior employees more capable earlier.
But it may simultaneously remove some of the work through which people traditionally became capable.
Routine work historically served as part of an informal apprenticeship, while AI is now increasing demand for judgment, leadership and adaptability earlier in people’s careers.
Think about how many careers historically developed.
A junior analyst built spreadsheets before interpreting them.
A young engineer performed calculations before approving designs.
A buyer processed transactions before negotiating strategic agreements.
A financial professional reconciled information before explaining its implications to executives.
A new supervisor observed experienced managers before leading increasingly difficult people situations.
A consultant gathered data before advising the client.
Some of that work may have been repetitive.
Some of it was also developmental.
It gave people thousands of small repetitions. They saw mistakes. Patterns. Exceptions. Customer behavior. Operational consequences.
They learned what “normal” looked like before being asked to recognize abnormal.
That is experience.
And experience is difficult to automate.
When the First Rung Disappears
Imagine a career ladder with ten rungs.
AI may allow someone to begin on rung three instead of rung one.
That sounds like progress.
And in many ways, it is.
But who teaches the person what was learned on rungs one and two?
The answer cannot simply be:
The AI will.
AI can provide information. Generate alternatives. Summarize documents. Analyze scenarios. Suggest language. Identify patterns. Accelerate research.
But judgment develops partly through exposure to consequences.
The supplier that looked inexpensive but became extremely costly.
The technically correct solution the customer rejected.
The employee who needed coaching rather than another instruction.
The forecast that looked statistically convincing but ignored something happening in the market.
The decision that worked—and the apparently identical decision six months later that failed.
Organizations may therefore face a new leadership responsibility:
Deliberately designing the experiences that routine work used to provide accidentally.
That could mean supervised decision making, rotational assignments, shadowing, case reviews, post-decision reflection, customer exposure, structured mentoring, simulation, progressively increasing decision authority, and deliberately allowing younger employees to make some decisions before technology makes every decision for them.
The development question changes from:
“What training does this employee need?”
to:
“What experiences must this person accumulate before we expect mature judgment?”
That is a very different conversation.
2. The Talent Shortage May Actually Be a Talent Allocation Problem
At the same time, companies continue describing talent as scarce.
Sometimes it is.
Specific technical capabilities remain difficult to find. Certain geographies face genuine labor shortages. Specialized skills can take years to develop.
But the World Economic Forum’s 2026 Chief People Officers’ Outlook highlights a more nuanced problem.
Drawing on perspectives from more than 140 global people leaders, the report finds that skills mismatches, rather than overall talent supply, are becoming a defining workforce challenge. The WEF identifies organizational redesign, upskilling and reskilling, agile talent models and internal mobility as important priorities.
World Economic Forum — Chief People Officers’ Outlook, May 2026
That distinction matters.
A company can simultaneously have open positions, underutilized employees, people with obsolete responsibilities, skills concentrated in the wrong geography, high performers trapped inside one function, employees capable of doing more, and leaders insisting:
“We cannot find talent.”
The problem may not always be availability.
It may be visibility and mobility.
The External Labor Market Is Still Moving
The latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics JOLTS report reinforces the complexity.
In July 2026, U.S. employers still reported approximately 7.3 million job openings.
There were about 5.1 million hires and 3.1 million quits during the month.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — JOLTS
The labor market has not stopped moving.
People are still entering roles. Leaving roles. Changing employers. And organizations are still competing for capabilities.
But before opening another requisition, leaders should ask a harder question:
Do we already employ the capability we are trying to recruit?
Perhaps in another business unit. Another plant. Another geography. Another function. Another job classification.
Or inside someone whose résumé does not perfectly match the position description but whose underlying capabilities do.
That requires leaders to stop thinking exclusively in terms of jobs and begin thinking more in terms of skills and deployable capability.
Managers Cannot Own Talent
Internal mobility sounds simple until the organization tries to practice it.
A high-performing employee becomes valuable to a manager.
The manager invests in that person.
The employee performs well.
Then another part of the organization wants them.
Suddenly the company discovers an unintended incentive.
The better the employee becomes, the harder the manager fights to keep them.
From the manager’s perspective, that behavior may be rational.
From the enterprise perspective, it can be destructive.
Talent becomes trapped inside organizational silos.
Companies then recruit externally for capabilities already sitting somewhere else in the business.
The leadership principle should be:
Managers lead talent. The enterprise owns access to talent.
That does not mean moving people irresponsibly.
It means recognizing that a strong organization creates pathways for people to move toward where they can create the greatest value.
Deloitte’s 2026 Global Human Capital Trends research reinforces the importance of this broader capability. Seven in ten business leaders say their primary competitive strategy over the next three years is to become faster and more nimble, and leaders identify faster orchestration of people and resources as one of the most important drivers of success.
Deloitte — 2026 Global Human Capital Trends
That is not merely an HR challenge.
It is an operating capability.
A company unable to redeploy talent quickly may be organizationally slower even when its people are highly capable.
Before Hiring, Ask Four Questions
What capability are we actually missing?
Does that capability already exist somewhere inside the enterprise?
Could someone grow into the role faster than we could hire externally?
What valuable employee could become significantly more valuable if moved into a different assignment?
These questions do not eliminate external recruiting.
External talent remains essential. New perspectives matter. Specialized expertise matters. Sometimes the required capability simply does not exist internally.
But the default assumption should not be that every capability gap automatically requires another external search.
The strongest organizations should increasingly become good at discovering, developing and redeploying capability already inside the system.
3. Change Load Is Becoming a Capacity Constraint
Now combine AI transformation and talent movement with a third development.
People are being asked to change constantly.
Not once.
Continuously.
Deloitte’s 2026 Global Human Capital Trends research found that one-third of workers experienced 15 major changes during the previous year alone.
Those changes included shifts in strategy, business models, technology and customer expectations.
At the same time, only 27% of respondents believed their organizations manage change effectively.
Deloitte also found that 85% consider the ability of organizations and workers to adapt at the required speed critical, but only 7% believe their organizations are leading in this capability.
Deloitte — Creating an Adaptable Workforce
Those numbers should concern leaders.
Because organizations normally understand capacity.
A factory cannot run unlimited production through a constrained machine.
A distribution center has throughput limits.
Capital is finite.
Engineering resources are finite.
Cash is finite.
Executive attention is finite.
But companies frequently behave as if human change capacity is infinite.
It is not.
Every Initiative Consumes Capacity
Consider what a company might simultaneously ask employees to absorb.
New ERP. AI rollout. Organizational restructuring. New leadership. Cost reduction. Supplier changes. Pricing transformation. CRM implementation. Acquisition integration. New performance system. Cybersecurity changes. New product introduction. Office-location changes. Updated compensation model. Revised strategy.
Each initiative may be perfectly rational.
Each may have a business case.
Each may even be necessary.
But employees do not experience them as separate PowerPoint presentations.
They experience them simultaneously.
The employee still has customers. Production targets. Monthly close. Supplier problems. Hiring responsibilities. Emails. Meetings. Family responsibilities. And ordinary work.
Then leadership adds another “strategic priority.”
Something eventually gives.
Usually not through dramatic rebellion.
Instead: adoption becomes partial, training gets skipped, people create workarounds, managers quietly retain the old process, projects extend, engagement falls, errors increase, and employees stop believing that every new initiative will last.
That final consequence may be the most dangerous.
When people experience enough abandoned initiatives, they learn a perfectly rational behavior:
Wait before committing. This one may disappear too.
That is how transformation fatigue becomes organizational cynicism.
Change Should Have a Capacity Plan
Leaders often ask:
What does this transformation require?
Technology. Budget. Consultants. Project management. Training. Governance.
But another question should be mandatory:
What organizational capacity will this change consume?
And then:
What are we stopping to create that capacity?
Every new priority that receives no corresponding subtraction creates competition inside the organization.
People compensate temporarily.
Then temporarily becomes permanently.
The objective is not to make people capable of tolerating infinite change.
It is to build organizations that sequence change intelligently, develop adaptive capability and stop lower-value work when higher-value work is introduced.
These Three Problems Are Actually One Problem
AI changes the work.
Routine tasks disappear or become accelerated.
Junior employees are expected to exercise more sophisticated judgment earlier.
The organization needs different skills.
Capability must move faster between functions, roles and businesses.
Transformation continues.
Employees are expected to learn, move and perform while absorbing continuous organizational change.
This creates a new type of leadership system.
One that must simultaneously develop judgment faster, identify skills better, move talent more freely, protect learning, create experience deliberately, sequence organizational change, and maintain performance while all of this happens.
That is why I would not classify these issues purely as HR topics.
They are operating-model issues.
Because the effectiveness of the human system increasingly determines the speed of the business system.
The New Leadership Bottleneck May Be Development Capacity
Companies have spent decades optimizing utilization.
Lean staffing. Larger spans. Lower overhead. Automation. Fewer organizational layers. Efficient structures.
Those practices can create real value.
But an organization optimized exclusively for today’s workload may have very little capacity to develop tomorrow’s capabilities.
Who has time to mentor?
Who can allow someone inexperienced to participate in an important decision?
Who can rotate a strong employee into another department when the current department is already understaffed?
Who can allow someone to learn when AI can produce the answer in seconds?
Who has time to conduct a postmortem after a decision when another problem is already waiting?
These questions expose an uncomfortable trade-off.
Development appears inefficient in the short term.
Teaching someone often takes longer than doing the work yourself.
Giving someone an unfamiliar assignment creates risk.
Rotating your best employee hurts today’s productivity.
Allowing someone to struggle with a problem seems irrational when AI can solve part of it instantly.
Yet organizations that eliminate these apparent inefficiencies may eventually eliminate the mechanisms through which expertise is created.
Efficiency consumes capability when leadership optimizes away every opportunity to learn.
That is not an argument against efficiency.
It is an argument for understanding what we are making efficient.
What Tuesday Leadership Now Requires
Do not only ask:
How can AI make this employee more productive?
Also ask:
What does this employee no longer learn because AI now performs part of the work?
Do not only ask:
Who should we recruit?
Also ask:
Who inside the organization could perform this work with the right exposure and development?
Do not only ask:
How do we communicate this transformation?
Also ask:
How much additional change capacity does the organization actually have?
Do not only ask:
Did people complete the training?
Ask:
Can they perform differently because of it?
Do not only ask managers to retain their best talent.
Ask them:
Whom have you developed well enough to move somewhere else?
That final question fundamentally changes the leadership mindset.
A leader’s success is no longer measured only by the performance of the team today.
It is also reflected in the number of stronger leaders and capabilities that team produces for tomorrow.
A Tuesday Leadership Audit
Take one leadership-team meeting and examine three things.
First, look at development.
Identify several people in AI-exposed roles. What routine developmental experiences are disappearing from their work? How will they acquire the judgment those experiences previously created?
Second, examine talent mobility.
Where are your hardest-to-fill positions? What skills do they actually require? Could those capabilities already exist somewhere else in your organization? Which managers are developing talent that moves upward or outward—and which managers consistently hold onto their strongest people?
Third, look at change capacity.
List the major organizational changes employees are currently absorbing. Not only the official transformation programs. All of them.
Systems. Policies. Leadership. Processes. Technology. Structures. Metrics.
Then ask:
If we introduce another major initiative this quarter, what exactly are we willing to stop?
If the answer is nothing, leadership has made a capacity assumption.
And capacity assumptions eventually become execution problems.
Our Perspective
At EGBS — ENLOSA: Global Business Solutions, we believe organizations increasingly need to manage human capability with the same discipline they apply to capital, capacity and technology.
AI can make work faster.
But leadership must ensure it does not remove the experiences through which judgment develops.
An external talent market can provide critical capabilities.
But leadership should first understand the capabilities already inside the organization.
Transformation can create competitive advantage.
But leadership must recognize that people have finite capacity to absorb simultaneous change.
These issues converge around one principle:
The organization of the future cannot merely deploy people. It must continuously develop, move and renew human capability.
That requires a different leadership mindset.
People are not fixed resources assigned permanently to boxes on an organization chart.
Skills evolve. Roles evolve. Technology evolves. Businesses evolve.
The leadership system must evolve with them.
So this Tuesday, ask three questions:
What experience is AI removing that we still need our people to learn?
What talent do we already possess but are failing to deploy?
How much more change can our organization realistically absorb before execution begins to deteriorate?
Those questions may eventually matter as much as headcount, turnover and labor cost.
Because the competitive advantage will not come only from having better technology.
It will come from having people capable of using technology wisely.
People who can move toward new opportunities.
People who can exercise judgment earlier.
People who can continue learning while the work changes around them.
And leaders who understand that the human operating system requires intentional design too.
AI can accelerate knowledge.
Mobility can accelerate capability.
Adaptability can accelerate change.
But leadership must connect all three.
Because technology does not develop people.
Organization charts do not move talent.
Transformation programs do not create capacity.
Leaders do.
ENLOSA: Global Business Solutions
Strategy. Leadership. Execution.
enlosa@enlosa.com | +1 (877) 246-1109
References
- PwC — 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer. PwC analyzed more than one billion job advertisements across 27 countries and territories. Source
- World Economic Forum — Chief People Officers’ Outlook, May 2026. Based on insights from more than 140 global people leaders, the report identifies skills mismatch, organizational redesign, reskilling, internal mobility and agile talent models as major workforce priorities. Source
- Deloitte — 2026 Global Human Capital Trends. Deloitte reports that one-third of workers experienced 15 major changes during the prior year and only 27% believe their organizations manage change effectively. Source
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, July 2026. BLS reported approximately 7.3 million job openings, 5.1 million hires and 3.1 million quits in July. Source
#TuesdayLeadership, #Leadership, #AILeadership, #FutureOfWork, #TalentManagement, #InternalMobility, #LeadershipDevelopment, #WorkforceStrategy, #ChangeManagement, #HumanCapital, #ExecutiveLeadership, #EGBS
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