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Artificial intelligence is transforming how we work, but adopting it successfully is about far more than technology. Áine Fanning explains why people, culture and leadership will determine whether organisations truly benefit from AI.
Artificial intelligence is often framed as a question of efficiency: faster workflows, automated tasks and smarter systems. But according to Áine Fanning, chief sales and marketing officer at Cpl Group in Dublin, that framing misses the bigger story.
AI is not only a new tool entering the workplace, but is a catalyst for organisational change too. “The most persistent myth about AI is that it’s a technology project,” she says. “It isn’t. It’s a people project with a technology component.”
Without that perspective, organisations risk disappointing results. Introducing AI successfully means bringing it into everyday processes while supporting employees through training, experimentation and change management.
“Real transformation happens when people understand why a tool changes their role, not just how to click the buttons,” she explains. For leaders navigating the shift, the task is less about installing software and more about guiding teams through a new way of working.
Start where the friction is
For companies beginning their AI journey – particularly small and medium-sized businesses – the question of where to start can feel overwhelming. Fanning advises a simple reframing: identify where time is already being wasted.
“For most SME owners, that answer sits in the administrative layer,” she says. “Emails, meeting notes, first-draft proposals, social media content, customer follow-ups. These are the tasks that consume hours every week without ever moving the business forward.”
A well-prompted AI tool can often return meaningful time within days, without large investments or technical overhauls.
“The key is to start with the area causing the most friction right now, get genuinely comfortable there, and build from a position of confidence rather than overwhelm,” she says.
This problem-first approach turns AI from a daunting strategic initiative into an immediate practical advantage.
From users to co-creators
Technology alone does not change behaviour. To move teams from passive adoption to active curiosity, workplace culture must evolve, too.
Fanning emphasises the importance of psychological safety when introducing AI tools. “You must make experimentation safe and visible,” she says. “When leaders only talk about AI in the context of efficiency targets and cost savings, employees experience it as surveillance, not opportunity.”
Instead, she encourages organisations to create spaces where teams can share their own discoveries. “The shift happens when people bring their own use cases to the table,” she says. “Something that saved them an hour, solved a problem differently, or improved a client interaction.”
At Cpl, informal “show and tell” moments allow employees to demonstrate how they are using AI in their work. Within weeks, she says, curiosity spreads organically.
“Suddenly you move from a handful of early adopters to a team that’s genuinely competing to find smarter ways of working,” she explains. “Curiosity is contagious when it’s rewarded rather than managed.”
Comfort with AI is not optional. It’s table stakes for staying relevant in the decade ahead.
Human skills become the differentiator
While AI accelerates productivity, Fanning believes it will ultimately make human capabilities more valuable, not less. “The three skills I keep coming back to are human interaction, relational intelligence and narrative fluency,” she says.
The ability to read a room, build trust and navigate complex relationships remains uniquely human. Meanwhile, narrative fluency – turning complexity into meaning that inspires action – will only grow more valuable in a world flooded with AI-generated content.
However, she also points to an emerging concern: women are currently engaging more slowly than men with AI tools and training. “That gap matters,” she says. “Comfort with AI is not optional. It’s table stakes for staying relevant in the decade ahead.”
The goal, she stresses, is not to become a technologist but to combine strong human skills with confident AI literacy. “That combination – warmth and wisdom powered by smart tools – is rare,” she notes. “And rare is where the opportunity lives.”
Protecting wellbeing in a fast-moving landscape
As organisations accelerate their adoption of AI, Fanning believes leaders must also recognise the hidden pressure it can place on teams.
“Poorly managed AI adoption is actually contributing to burnout,” she says. Constantly learning new platforms, interfaces and workflows adds a significant cognitive load — one that leaders need to acknowledge openly.
“The pressure to constantly learn new tools and new ways of working is real,” she adds. “It’s not a personal failing, and leaders need to say that out loud.”
A practical solution is to build consolidation periods into the rollout of new technology, giving employees time to develop confidence before the next wave of change arrives. It also requires leaders to model honesty about their own learning process.
“When leaders admit they’re still figuring things out, it gives the whole team permission to experiment and make mistakes,” she says.
The future of leadership
Looking ahead, Fanning believes the workplace will operate across three interconnected layers: a core of permanent employees who hold company knowledge and strategy, a flexible layer of specialists deployed around projects, and AI-enabled workflows that automate repetitive tasks.
Within that structure, leadership will depend less on speed and more on judgment. “AI makes you faster,” she says. “But it doesn’t make you wiser.”
Wise leadership in a data-rich world requires the ability to question outputs rather than accept them blindly — to ask what isn’t being measured as often as what is.
“I often describe AI as having a brilliant but junior assistant,” she says. “Incredibly capable, but you wouldn’t sign off on their work without reading it.”
The leaders who retain their capacity for deep thinking and moral reasoning, she argues, will be the ones organisations trust most.
A moment for women to lead
As AI systems increasingly execute tasks and make decisions, the human role is shifting upstream toward governance: defining the rules, setting ethical guardrails and making judgment calls when something goes wrong.
For many women in leadership, Fanning believes this represents a powerful opportunity. “Governance work demands stakeholder empathy, systems thinking, ethical reasoning and the ability to build coalitions across competing interests,” she says. “These are skills many strong women leaders have been developing throughout their careers.”
Her message is clear.
“This is not the moment to reposition defensively,” she says. “It is the moment to lead from the front.”
AI is one of the most talked-about topics in business today, yet many professionals are still asking the same questions: what is it really, who is using it effectively, and how can businesses start building the skills to use it well? In our new “Ask Áine” series, Áine Fanning, chief sales and marketing officer at Cpl Group, answers these questions and more, sharing insights on technology, talent and the future of work.
