What a leadership specialist told us about the people side of AI

AI only gives a firm more capacity when the people expected to use it get behind it, and that depends on how the firm's leaders explain the change and follow it through. Jo Reynolds, the founder of Leadership Lens Studio, works on the people side of change, and what Jo told us in two conversations over the last few weeks matches what we see in firms bringing AI in.

Jo helps leaders understand what is really driving the behaviour in their teams, drawing on coaching, behavioural insight and two decades of leadership and organisational development. Most recently that meant the people side of an organisation's AI implementation, where the role was "to actually work out what was going on and give people tools to get themselves past that."

A solution nobody uses frees up no capacity

The situation Jo is most often brought into is firms "finding that all the technology's in, but they're still not getting the results they need because the people stuff's getting in the way."

The cost shows up in the recovery rate. Every job has a time budget, and the fee is set from it. When a job runs over, the extra time is written off, so the firm bills less of the time it recorded. When a solution brings jobs in inside their budget, less is written off, and the recovery rate, fee income and gross profit rise while the same headcount takes on more work. A solution nobody uses leaves the jobs running over as they did before.

So each solution we implement comes with an enablement pack for the people who will use it, showing what it does and how to use it in their own work. It also comes with the message leadership should give the team: AI is there to support them and give them more time for better work.

A clear message can still be heard wrongly

Giving that message is harder than it sounds. "You can say it once and it's really clear," Jo told us, "but actually what you say isn't necessarily what's received."

A costed roadmap gives leaders something specific to say. Every solution on it sets out whose work it touches and how many hours it frees up, so people can picture what AI changes in their own week. The message still has to be repeated and shown to be true, and once solutions are live the firm can show each team the hours freed and the recovery rate on the jobs those solutions touch.

Leaders often think the team is readier than it is

Before any of that, a firm's leaders need an honest view of how ready their people are. "Change readiness is a really interesting one because often, leaders think the organisation is ready," Jo said. "They'll tell you that the organisation is crying out for it. And actually, what then happens isn't always what you would expect, and it's because the way in which the leadership deliver that change is not always optimal."

We check the people as one of the layers before any solution goes on the roadmap, and we don't take leadership's view on its own. The intakes go to department heads and to the individuals doing the work, and we ask how the firm's last big change went, because a team that had a bad time last time tends to resist the next one. Implementing solutions one by one helps too, since a team sees one solution work on its own jobs before the next arrives.

When a team isn't ready, some people go back to the old way of doing the task, and others turn to their own free AI accounts, where the firm has no control over the client data they put in. So each solution runs where its data allows: the AI provider's own cloud only when nothing sensitive is involved, the firm's own server, where the provider never trains on what it sends, or a machine in the office. The firm's AI policy says which tools people may use and what for, which keeps the work compliant and client data secure.

To see which AI your team uses today and where client data goes, the quiz below takes a few minutes.

Adoption depends on leaders across the firm

The person driving AI can't always speak to everyone, so the follow-through after the first solution goes live depends on more than one person. "You're getting organisations where the loyalty to the leader and the ability for the person who's driving this to go and speak to everybody on an individual basis just isn't there," Jo said. "That's often where there needs to be a real capability switch."

That switch falls to the people in leadership roles across the firm. Partners, department heads and managers each carry the message to their own teams and keep it going. Every solution also has a named owner who checks what it produces before it reaches a client, so the standard of the work holds or rises. As the models change, each solution is checked and tweaked so its quality doesn't drop unnoticed, and the way the team works with it needs the same attention.

What firm leaders should do now

Taken together, Jo's points set out the order a firm needs to follow, whoever does the work, with its people involved at every step.

Start with the firm's own work, broken down into the individual tasks and processes that create value for its clients, as described by the people who do them: who does each one, how long it takes, what data it uses and who signs it off.

Before any solution, check the layers those tasks sit on: the business and each department, the tech stack, the quality, completeness and security of the data, compliance and governance, and the people, including how ready they are. Where a layer isn't ready, fixing it comes first.

Then set out a roadmap of solutions, each fully costed with the hours it frees up, what it costs to implement, its first-year return and what it does to the recovery rate on the jobs it touches.

Implement the solutions one by one, in the roadmap's order, each running where its data allows, with its risks designed out, covered by the AI policy, owned by a named person who checks what it produces, and introduced to the team with an enablement pack and a clear message. Once they are live, keep managing them as the models change, with the firm owning its knowledge and renting the AI.

Done in that order, the team gets behind AI and the firm gets more capacity from the same headcount, hits its chargeable time targets and lifts its recovery rate, in a way that is compliant and keeps client data secure.

See where your firm stands

Our quiz asks which AI your team uses and on whose accounts, where client data goes, what your clients have agreed to and who checks the work. Your report shows where your firm stands today and gives you a 30-day plan to make its AI safe with client data.

If you want our support putting it in place, book a free call.