Leaders' AI Strategies Reveal What They Think of Their People

AI is forcing every leader into a choice they can’t dodge: do you believe your people are fundamentally creative and motivated, or lazy and in need of control?  Most leaders won’t want to answer that honestly, but their AI strategy already has. Douglas McGregor was a social psychologist and MIT Sloan professor who, in 1960, argued that leaders don’t just manage from goals and objectives; they manage from hidden assumptions about human nature. He called one cluster of assumptions Theory X: the belief that people dislike work, avoid responsibility, and need tight control and incentives to perform. The contrasting Theory Y assumed that, given the right conditions, people will seek responsibility, exercise self-direction, and bring far more creativity and judgment than most organizations ever tap. When leaders push AI in ways that amplify surveillance, shrink autonomy, or quietly replace judgment with automation, they aren’t just “modernizing,” they’re hard-coding Theory X into the operating system of work. Here’s the thing about Theory X/Y: McGregor wasn’t arguing which was right, whether employees were fundamentally lazy or capable, but that managerial beliefs become self-fulfilling. - Bud Waddell writing in Fast Company