Is your 'AI Transformation' stalling?
Leaders need personal AI fluency before they try to automate the organization.
In this article, I argue that most organizations are using the same terminology (Artificial Intelligence) to describe two different but related things, which adds to the confusion and overall “AI Transformation Paralysis” – a state where the organization feels they should be further ahead, but don’t seem to be able to move, and they don’t know why.
Let me describe the difference:
1. When the leader works directly with frontier models to improve their performance, expand their thinking, and deliver better outcomes, I would consider this a true engagement with Artificial Intelligence. Personal, direct, one-on-one.
2. We also use the term “Artificial Intelligence” to describe point-solutions that are helping streamline and automate work: a chatbot, workflow, screening tool, onboarding assistant, or process automation. I do NOT call these use-cases ‘Artificial Intelligence’, but – Intelligent Automation.
This distinction matters:
Artificial Intelligence is the leader’s direct relationship with frontier intelligence, and it must come first!
Artificial intelligence (AI), at the human level, is direct interaction with frontier intelligence. It is a leader using ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, (or other frontier models) as a thinking partner, researcher, writer, strategist, coach, advisor, and creator, at work and at home.
It helps you think better. It helps you draft faster. It helps you explore ideas, test assumptions, prepare for meetings, make decisions, learn new subjects, improve health, manage wealth, plan a career, support relationships, and build things that used to require a larger team.
This is personal, practical, and transformational. It changes what one leader can know, produce, decide, and attempt. In this case, the AI is no longer a tool, but an Agent and your personal Thinking Partner that keeps improving over time, providing you with “additional IQ on demand”.
Intelligent Automation is AI-enabled work execution, and should come second!
Intelligent Automation (IA) is different.
IA is the process of designing, building, buying, or deploying AI-enabled systems to perform defined work. A customer service chatbot is IA. Automated resume screening is IA. New employee onboarding automation is IA. Invoice triage, claims intake, sales follow-up, compliance monitoring, document classification, and internal service desk automation are IA.
AI is where the leader learns to think with frontier intelligence. IA is where the organization redesigns work so AI-enabled systems can perform tasks, workflows, and processes safely at scale.
The two are connected. They are not the same.
Why the distinction changes the leadership sequence
Many organizations are trying to jump straight to Intelligent Automation (AI). They want the chatbot, the agent, the automation roadmap, the vendor selection, the use case portfolio, the savings target, and the transformation story.
That instinct is understandable. Organizations are under pressure to improve productivity, reduce friction, recover capacity, and move faster. IA can help. Done well, it can remove low-value work, improve service, reduce errors, and free people for judgment, care, creativity, and relationship work.
Leaders who have not personally used Frontier Models themselves (in a properly configured, safe and controlled setting), simply have no reference point to appreciate the power and limitations of these models. They are robbed of those visceral moments of awe and wonder, as well as moments of frustration and doubt, that we – who use AI daily for our lives and work are familiar with. Without this first-hand experience, it becomes difficult to set the right expectations for where and how both AI and IA can be best used to help.
An “AI Illiterate” leader is poorly equipped to sponsor and lead AI & IA adoption & transformation.
That is why AI fluency should come first!
AI fluency is leadership capability. It is the ability to use AI safely and seriously in your own work, then apply that lived understanding to strategy, governance, risk, workforce design, and investment decisions.
A leader who has worked with frontier models as a thinking partner will ask better questions.
What decision is this system supporting? What task is being performed? What data does it need? Where does that data go? What could go wrong? Who verifies the output? Who owns the risk? Who can challenge the result? Where must a human remain accountable?
Those questions are not technical details. They are leadership work.
The better definition of AI transformation
A serious AI transformation should mean two things at once:
First, every decision-maker becomes more capable because they have an AI colleague that helps them think, research, prepare, analyze, draft, decide, and learn.
Second, every suitable task, workflow, and process is examined for Intelligent Automation, with clear boundaries, evidence, governance, and human accountability.
That is the future organization: AI-fluent humans plus intelligently automated work.
Over time, the leader’s AI colleague may become a trusted Chief of Staff. It may help manage context, prepare decisions, connect to governed organizational data, and become the primary point of contact between the leader and the institution’s information environment.
That does not make the leader less responsible. It makes leadership judgment more important.
Where leaders should start
Start with yourself.
Use AI daily on safe, non-sensitive work. Ask it to help you think, not to think for you. Use it to draft, challenge, summarize, compare, explain, and prepare. Learn where it is brilliant. Learn where it is weak. Learn what trust feels like only after verification.
Then look at the organization.
Ask where IA can remove friction, recover capacity, improve service, and support people without hiding accountability. Do not automate confusion. Do not automate broken processes. Do not automate decisions that leaders cannot explain.
The practical sequence is simple.
First, build AI fluency.
Then, sponsor Intelligent Automation.
The future will not wait for leaders to feel ready. But leaders who start with their own fluency will be far better prepared to shape that future with judgment.
The Summit Leadership Alliance is here to help, contact me if you have any questions, or would like to learn more: dalibor@TheSummitLA.com