Organizations are facing an urgent change management challenge as leaders push AI adoption while workers quietly disengage, according to a new analysis by two workplace experts writing in Fast Company. Tomer Cohen, chief customer officer at WalkMe, and executive coach Jenny Resnick challenge the common narrative that employees are resisting AI, arguing instead that what looks like resistance is often a rational response to a system that changed at the top without bringing people along.
McKinsey’s Superagency in the Workplace report found that employees are already using generative AI three times more than their leaders realize, yet only 1% of companies say AI is fully integrated into how work gets done. Much of this activity is happening outside approved systems entirely, suggesting workers are moving faster than their organizations can support.
The authors propose three strategies for leaders: understand why employees resist rather than labeling it as defiance, offer meaningful choice and autonomy so people feel agency, and orchestrate a broader organizational reset instead of tightening control. They stress that executives must address underlying system flaws—unclear priorities, conflicting incentives, or poor digital infrastructure—before expecting AI adoption to stick.
This analysis echoes growing concerns across the tech industry about the gap between executive AI enthusiasm and on-the-ground reality. Many experts warn that forcing adoption without addressing cultural and structural friction will deepen distrust and widen the productivity chasm between early adopters and lagging companies.
The counter_argument to this perspective is that some employee resistance is genuine skepticism or fear of job displacement, not just a systems problem. Critics of the change-management-first approach argue that organizations cannot afford slow adoption cycles when competitors are moving aggressively to automate workflows and reduce headcount.