A cultural rift is forming inside most organizations: employees who have figured out AI are accelerating, while the rest feel left behind. Left unaddressed, the gap will break the team you have spent years building. The first move is to name the rift openly at an all-hands meeting, because naming it gives people permission to be uncomfortable, and that is the first step to becoming comfortable.
It is Monday morning. Or Tuesday. It does not matter which day, your calendar looks the same.
Back-to-back meetings from eight in the morning. You finish the last one at five, open your inbox, and the real work begins. Somewhere between the third meeting and the fourteenth email, there is this quiet voice in the back of your mind.
Why is everyone else going home early?
You already know the answer. And it is making you uncomfortable.
The rift no one is talking about
Inside your organization right now, a split is forming.
On one side: the people who have figured out AI. They are moving faster, producing more, and some of them, let us be honest, are becoming a little arrogant about it.
On the other side: the people who have not figured it out yet. Not because they are incapable. Because they are exactly like you and me before we understood what was happening. Overwhelmed. Uncertain. Quietly wondering if they are being left behind.
What you are watching is the culture of high school reproducing itself inside your professional organization. The cool kids and the ones on the outside. Nobody wants to go through that again and yet here it is, inside the company you are responsible for.
This rift, left unaddressed, will not stay manageable. It will grow. The AI-enabled employees will keep accelerating. The others will keep feeling isolated. And the gap between them will eventually break the team you have spent years building.
What your next hire already knows
Here is something that changes how you think about this.
The next person you hire for any role, product manager, marketing lead, operations is arriving with something your current team did not have when they joined. They know how to deploy AI as a team within their role.
Not a tool. A team.
Customer support, marketing, legal review, financial modeling, all of it, running in parallel, managed by one person who knows how to direct it. That new hire is not one employee. In practice, they are twenty.
I do not say this to create panic. I say it because understanding this changes what you do next.
Your existing employees who are not yet comfortable with AI are not your liability. They are your most valuable asset, the moment they cross over. Every person who makes that transition multiplies their output dramatically. Laying off people in the name of AI efficiency is not a smart move. It is the most expensive mistake a leader can make right now. This is the subject of my keynote, When Every Employee Becomes a Leader, Because of AI.
What you say when you call the all-hands meeting
The first move is the one most leaders avoid. You call the meeting and you name what everyone already feels.
You say: I see a rift in this organization. There are people comfortable with AI and people who are not. That is my responsibility to fix, and I have not given it enough attention.
That is it. That is the whole speech.
When a leader names the thing no one will say out loud, the room exhales. The people who were uncomfortable suddenly have permission to be uncomfortable openly which is the first step to becoming comfortable. This rift is one symptom of a bigger truth, why an AI project is really a culture project.
This shift from traditional work to AI-enabled work is not the introduction of a new dashboard. It is the equivalent of moving from pen and paper to the personal computer. Those of us old enough to remember that transition know: it was disorienting, it took time, and today you cannot imagine working without it. This is that moment again.
Your job is not to have all the answers. Your job is to make it safe to ask the questions.
You are not alone in this
Every executive I speak to is navigating the same thing. Full calendar, growing pressure, a culture quietly fracturing around an invisible line.
The leaders who come through this well are not the ones with the best AI strategy on paper. They are the ones who addressed the human side first. Who understood that culture moves faster than technology once the leader decides to move it.
That decision starts with naming what is happening.
You already know it is happening. Now you know what to do.
If you would rather watch, here is the podcast episode this essay is adapted from or watch the full episode on YouTube.
Frequently asked questions
What is the AI culture rift? It is the split forming inside most organizations between the employees who have figured out AI, who are moving faster and producing more, and those who have not yet, who feel overwhelmed and left behind. Left unaddressed it reproduces the dynamics of high school inside a professional organization, and the gap eventually breaks the team you have spent years building.
How should a leader respond to the rift? Name it openly at an all-hands meeting. The leader says plainly that there is a rift, that closing it is their responsibility, and that they have not given it enough attention. Naming the thing no one will say out loud lets the room exhale and gives uncomfortable people permission to be uncomfortable, which is the first step to becoming comfortable.
Should I lay off employees who are slow to adopt AI? No. Employees who are not yet comfortable with AI are your most valuable asset the moment they cross over, because every person who makes that transition multiplies their output dramatically. Laying people off in the name of AI efficiency is one of the most expensive mistakes a leader can make right now.
How big is the shift to AI-enabled work? It is not the introduction of a new dashboard. It is the equivalent of moving from pen and paper to the personal computer: disorienting at first, slow to take hold, and impossible to imagine working without once it does. A single AI-enabled hire can direct customer support, marketing, legal review and financial modeling in parallel, effectively operating as twenty people.
Thomas Anglero is a Strategic AI Advisor, keynote speaker and author of Intro to Artificial Intelligence. He has delivered over 450 keynotes across 30 countries for organizations including IBM, the WHO, the World Governments Summit and the European Commission. He founded the IBM Watson AI Lab for Cancer at the Oslo Cancer Cluster and closed over $500 million in enterprise transformation deals as CTO and Chief Innovation Officer at Cognizant.