The AI Gap Isn't Your People. It's You.
FrequencyMay 25, 202600:06:05

The AI Gap Isn't Your People. It's You.

Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index surveyed 20,000 workers across 31 countries and landed on the same bottleneck everywhere: employees are ready for AI. Their organisations aren't. Two-thirds of AI users say it frees them for higher-value work. The problem is that most companies haven't redesigned anything to actually capture that value.

Only 13% of workers say their employer rewards reinventing work with AI. One in four say leadership has a clear direction on it. Microsoft calls the top 19% of organisations "Frontier Firms" — the ones where structural capability and individual readiness reinforce each other. Everyone else is leaving value on the table.

Chuck and Jenni dig into whose job it is to close that leadership ambiguity gap — and whether trying to fix it from the comms chair just creates a different problem.

https://news.microsoft.com/annual-work-trend-index-2026/