In this episode of The AI Adoption Podcast, I speak with Neha Kabra from McKinsey about how AI is reshaping leadership, customer service, employees’ roles and the expectations placed on boards.

Neha explains why legacy leadership approaches are struggling. Many leadership skills remain the same, but the speed of decision making has changed. Early movers are already seeing returns, while others remain stuck in pilots that do not scale.

We look at the balance between AI, customer service, productivity and staffing. A European bank improved productivity and raised its customer satisfaction by eight points. Klarna cut 700 roles and relied on AI alone, but later reversed course when customers needed empathy that a chatbot could not provide.

Neha outlines three actions that help people and AI work together: clear role and responsibility boundaries, better trust and auditability, and training so teams feel confident using AI.

We discuss the impact on jobs, why some roles will change and why AI is likely to create long-term value. Neha also explains that many pilots fail because of weak data foundations, unclear organisational ambition and a tendency to build broad horizontal AI tools instead of vertical use cases. As she puts it, your AI deployment is “as good or dumb as the data that sits behind it”.

Neha talks about three types of AI organisations: AI first, human augmented and AI augmented. She sets out what boards should focus on and why they need to adjust their risk appetite when considering AI adoption.

We also cover the role of partnerships with organisations such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, AWS, Azure, Salesforce and ServiceNow.

Neha ends with advice for young people on how to future proof themselves by building AI foundations, human skills and a T-shaped profile. An important reminder that depth of knowledge and subject area expertise will continue to matter.

Chapters

00:00 The Impact of AI on Legacy Leadership

05:43 Customer Experience and AI Integration

08:47 Employee Engagement and AI Augmentation

11:46 Managing Human-AI Collaboration

14:24 Balancing Productivity and Innovation

17:16 Challenges in Scaling AI Pilots

20:02 Key Priorities for Boards in AI Adoption

22:45 The Role of Partnerships in AI Success

25:57 Future-Proofing Careers in an AI-Driven World