Microsoft leader says adapting to the AI era requires ‘activating at every level of the organization’

Few disagree at this point that AI is a transformative technology that companies must adapt to. But who within a company is responsible for driving that adaptation? 

“If your approach is that everyone is responsible for it, then no one is responsible,” said Indeed CEO Chris Hyams, who spoke onstage at Fortune’s Workplace Innovation Summit on Monday.

Backing that view is Colette Stallbaumer, general manager of Microsoft 365 Copilot, who spoke at the event that same day.

“I do think more and more organizations, including Microsoft, are making it someone’s job,” said Stallbaumer, who is also cofounder of Microsoft’s research and thought-leadership platform, WorkLab.

In the case of Indeed, the solution was to designate one primary person, an R&D leader, to drive AI change across the organization, Hyams said.

At Microsoft, Satya Nadella recently tapped Kathleen Hogan, who’d been the chief people officer, to become the chief transformation officer “in this AI era.” 

But Stallbaumer believes that while it’s important to have somebody assume such a role, “it’s about activating at every level of the organization.”

She added, “If you have not made your line of business leaders accountable for transforming their business units or their functions, you’re never going to have progress. You’re never going to see that massive scale in terms of upskilling.”

And there’s little doubt that upskilling will be required across departments and companies to adapt to the AI era.

“AI is going to fundamentally disrupt and change all work,” said Anu Madgavkar, partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, who shared the stage with Stallbaumer. “No job is exempt. No job is going to go under the radar.”

With that in mind, she added, “what companies need to do is figure out how people change what they know how to do—because they’re going to need to do very different things going forward.”

And employers, she believes, are the ones who must drive the transformation. 

“Work experience is actually the biggest school on the planet,” she said. “We learn skills by doing things in work with other people, and by changing what we do every few years—taking on a new challenge, a new role, working with a new team. That’s how we build knowledge and human capital.”

But employees, too, need to work on adapting themselves to the AI era, believes Glassdoor CEO Christian Sutherland-Wong, who also shared the stage. When people ask him who’s looking after their careers, he said, “I always tell them nobody cares about your career more than you do.”

“So I think, at the end of the day, employees as well have to take full responsibility here for retooling themselves,” he continued. “Otherwise, they’ll fall through the cracks if they’re going to simply rely on their employers to help them through this journey.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com