A dear friend of mine shared an article on LinkedIn recently, and when I read it, I actually said out loud to my empty kitchen, "There it is," because it was exactly what I have been saying over and over for the last few years.

Ernst & Young, one of the Big Four firms and about as buttoned-up and numbers-driven as a company gets, announced that it's setting aside $100 million in bonuses for employees who demonstrate human skills: leadership, judgment, business acumen, collaboration, and the ability to adapt. They'll reward technology adoption too, which makes perfect sense, but the real headline is that one of the most data-obsessed organizations in the world just put a nine-figure price tag on the things no machine can do for us. They describe the future they're building toward as a "tech-led, human-powered world," and I haven't been able to stop thinking about that phrase since.

Here's what I believe, and I believe it all the way down to my bones: this is just the tip of the iceberg.

For the last few years, so much of the conversation about AI has been rooted in fear, in the question of what it's going to take from us and whose job it's coming for next. And I understand that fear; I really do. But I think we've been asking the wrong question. The better question isn't what AI will replace; it's what AI will free us to become. AI is brilliant at speed and output and patterns. It drafted this email; it can summarize the Zoom meeting, and crunch the forecast before you've finished your coffee. What it cannot do is sit across the table from a nervous client and feel the energy shift in the room, or make a judgment call grounded in twenty years of lived experience and a gut feeling you've finally learned to trust, or lead a team through change in a way that makes them actually want to follow you.

I spent 25 years in corporate leadership, all the way up to the Chief Sales Officer seat, and I can tell you that the moments that truly moved the needle were never the spreadsheets. They were the moments I trusted what I knew and led from my Inner Authority. And I also know, intimately, what it costs when we spend our energy masking and performing a version of ourselves we think the room wants, because that energy has to come from somewhere, and it almost always comes from the very human gifts that Ernst & Young is now willing to pay $100 million to find.

So the person, and the company, that comes out on top in the next few years won't be the one who resists AI, and it won't be the one who hands everything over to it either. It will be the one who leans all the way into what makes us human and then lets AI carry the tasks so we can finally give our full attention to the work only we can do.

This is exactly why my keynote, Switch On Your Light, feels more urgent today than the day I wrote it. In it, I talk about Superman and his kryptonite, and why I believe our human experience is the one thing AI will never be able to replicate, and then I show audiences how to stop contracting and start expanding into the leaders they're meant to be. If you're planning a leadership retreat, a sales kickoff, an association conference, or an all-hands meeting and you want your people to walk out knowing how to lead from their own light in an AI world, I would love to talk with you.

You can learn more about my keynotes and check availability here: https://www.karabundedunn.com/speaker

The future is tech-led, but it's human-powered, and I can't wait to see what you do with yours.

XOXO,
Kara

👉 Book me to speak: https://www.karabundedunn.com/speaker