AI is moving faster than any technology we’ve seen before, and organizations are under pressure to show results. And yet, the question remains: Why doesn’t progress match the promise?
The answer isn’t more tools. It’s what people are enabled to do with them.
The friction we see is that many people are unsure how to use AI to their greatest benefit. Companies often struggle to measure the impact of their AI investments because they likely haven’t yet demonstrated return on investment for their employees.
Progress comes when employees actively adopt AI and see meaningful impact on their work—when they’re confident about questioning outputs, applying judgment, and integrating it into their real work.
But there’s another layer to that friction.
Alongside the industry’s excitement and expectations, there’s real hesitation. AI still feels uncertain: Where do I start? Am I already behind? What if I get this wrong?
That hesitation is a signal that access alone isn’t enough; people need to feel confident that AI will elevate their work, not detract from it, or worse, make them irrelevant.
You aren’t behind; you just need to get started. And you do that by learning one new skill at a time. Even skeptics can become strong advocates if they start by learning how to use AI to do the traditional task they dislike most. Once they feel the inevitable benefit, they’re highly likely to try the next task they don’t like doing. From there, we often see a path of continuous learning.
Here’s what too few people realize: technology alone isn’t going to elevate their performance. When everyone knows how to use the tools, the differentiator will be their uniquely human skills that no AI tool can replace.
Human skills aren’t “soft”—they’re foundational
In the New York Times bestselling book Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI, the authors describe five human capabilities that no machine can replace: curiosity, compassion, creativity, courage, and communication.
That same idea extends beyond the individual—organizations aren’t abstract systems; they’re made of people.
What we often call “organizational skills” are simply human skills, practiced consistently and scaled intentionally.
From human potential to organizational capability
A new IDC InfoBrief sponsored by Microsoft, Powering Up: Human Skills for the AI Era,1 highlights a familiar gap: organizations are investing heavily in AI tools but far less in the capabilities needed to turn them into value.
These capabilities span cognitive, collaborative, leadership, ethical, and business domains.
How do these skills scale? They come together across three levels:
- Individual. How people think, decide, take risks, and act—especially when working with AI.
- Teams. How those capabilities show up in collaboration and workflows.
- Organization. What leaders reinforce through culture, systems, and governance.
This is where personal capability becomes organizational advantage.
How human skills scale in the AI era
The human skills explored in Open to Work don’t disappear at the organizational level; they show up differently at scale.
1. Curiosity: Cognitive and collaborative capability
At the individual level, curiosity starts with a desire to explore and learn what’s possible. At scale, this shows up as:
- Asking better questions to challenge assumptions.
- Exploring different approaches beyond the first answer.
- Sharing learnings across teams.
2. Compassion: Ethical and leadership capability
Compassion is empathy and awareness of impact. At scale, this shows up as:
- Applying ethical judgment and accountability.
- Identifying and addressing bias.
- Practicing responsible data use.
3. Creativity: Cognitive and business capability
Creativity isn’t about aesthetics. It’s about imagining what doesn’t yet exist. At scale, this shows up as:
- Framing problems more effectively.
- Creating new sources of value.
- Driving innovation beyond efficiency.
AI can optimize what exists. Humans decide what’s worth building next.
4. Courage: Cognitive and leadership capability
Courage starts with acting even when outcomes aren’t certain. At scale, this shows up as:
- Applying critical thinking and judgment.
- Making decisions in complex environments.
- Leading change without guaranteed outcomes.
5. Communication: Leadership and business capability
Communication starts with clarity and listening. At scale, this shows up as:
- Setting a clear vision for AI transformation.
- Translating technical capability into business meaning.
- Aligning teams across functions.
What leaders should consider next
Taken together, these examples point to a clear pattern: personal strengths become organizational advantage when they’re built at scale.
If human skills are the differentiator, how do we design for them intentionally? Three mindset adjustments matter most—especially in a moment where excitement about AI is often matched by hesitation about where to begin:
- Focus on the work, not just the training
- Human skills develop through real decisions, real collaboration, and real accountability—not one-off courses.
- Model the behaviors consistently
- What leaders practice signals what’s safe. Judgment, curiosity, empathy, and learning must be seen, not just stated.
- Measure what actually changes outcomes
- Beyond adoption, organizations need to track decision quality, trust and confidence, and cross-functional outcomes.
The real opportunity of AI
AI won’t make organizations less human—but it will raise expectations for how people think, decide, and work.
The organizations that succeed won’t be the most automated. They’ll be the ones that invest in people as intentionally as they invest in technology.
That’s the opportunity—and the work—in front of us.
Continue learning at Microsoft AI Skills Fest
If you’re looking for a practical way to build AI and human skills, no matter your role, join us for Microsoft AI Skills Fest, June 8–12, 2026. It’s a week of free, guided, digital learning designed to make skilling more approachable and relevant, with options for leaders, business users, technical roles, and developers.
On the AI Skills Fest Mainstage, human skills will be a prominent theme. I’ll be hosting a conversation with Aneesh Raman, co-author of Open to Work, and Gina Smith, PhD, co-author of Powering Up: Human Skills for the AI Era. Together we’ll unpack what it takes to build human capability alongside AI—from individual habits to team practices to organization-wide norms.
To go deeper, we’ll also have a dedicated session with Dr. Michael Gervais, sport performance psychologist and founder of Finding Mastery, to help you develop the mindsets and human skills that will help you thrive as AI reshapes how we work.
We hope to see you there.
1IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by Microsoft, Powering Up: Human Skills for the AI Era, Doc. US54451326-IB, May 2026.
