In his 1993 book “Managing with Dual Strategies,” Derek Abell made a bold argument for his time: running the business and changing the business are not sequential activities — they need to happen in parallel. He wrote that changing the business requires a clear vision of the future and a strategy for how the organization must evolve to meet it.
That’s difficult in the age of AI, where there are no cookie-cutter roadmaps forward. And it’s especially hard for CIOs who — now expected to run and change the business at the same time — still lack in many cases the deep business partnerships needed to do both well.
The gap often starts with HR. In a recent interview, Jonathan Feldman, CIO for Wake County, N.C., said, “IT is fundamentally a people business — and that without a strong partnership with HR, CIOs risk falling short.”
In the AI era, this partnership is critical, not optional. As partners, CIOs and HR leaders can define and shape the future of work for their companies, in close alignment with their CEOs. The risk of inaction is significant.
Organizations that fail to adapt will face higher costs than competitors, struggle to build the workforce they need, and lack the speed required to compete in an increasingly AI-driven world.
This article focuses on three areas CIOs must address in parallel to compete:
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How work is changing across roles and functions.
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How systems must evolve to support AI-augmented work.
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What skills workers will need to remain relevant.
Job disruption and workforce shifts
Last November, a 2025 Stanford University study led by Dr. Erik Brynjolfsson using data from millions of ADP payroll records found that AI is already driving labor market shifts. Early-career workers in AI-exposed occupations are experiencing a 16% decline in employment, while employment for experienced workers remains stable so far. To be clear, employment changes are concentrated in occupations where AI automates rather than augments labor.
Without question, AI will affect tasks, occupations and industries in different ways, replacing work in some, augmenting others, and transforming still others. Professions already affected at the hiring level include software developers and customer service representatives. More experienced workers have not been disrupted at the same rate, despite being less likely to embrace AI to augment their work. Generative AI tools like Claude and Open AI models are already demonstrating gains in personal productivity.
The question CIOs and their HR partners need to answer is: which business processes and tasks within the enterprise will be automated, augmented, or changed, and — over time — what work will look like if agents handle execution. In the longer-term agentic world, humans will be responsible for architecting work, putting together governance structures (guidelines, guardrails, and standards), and managing how agents do their execution. In this phase, Ian Beacraft said in his South by Southwest talk a few weeks ago, we move to agentic organizations.
Which work gets automated, augmented, rebuilt
To navigate the workforce shift, CIOs should task their enterprise architects to take their maps of business capabilities and business processes and determine which will be automated, augmented, or changed. In practice, this makes enterprise architecture the mechanism for redesigning work. In many cases, this should be done using future-state maps that reflect how AI can transform operating models and create new value propositions.
With these in hand, CIOs, along with their HR partners and AI-skilled architects, should evaluate job skills, determine which can be automated or augmented with AI, and align them to job descriptions.
Role of enterprise architects
Enterprise architects can help by relating maps of business capabilities, skills, and job descriptions. To be clear, EAs are in an assist role; they should not own the workforce or job redesign directly.
Instead, EAs should connect the dots across business capabilities, processes, systems, data, the operating model and governance, helping to inform role and skills changes alongside HR and the business.
This collective effort should result in two things: first, identifying highly automated jobs; second, defining new job classifications that will combine job tasks from partially automated jobs or for roles that will manage agent-driven work and performance. This may be the most important job that enterprise architects ever perform — a rebuilding of the entire enterprise.
Systems must support AI-augmented work
With this completed, the next logical question to consider is how systems should be designed to better support augmented jobs.
For these positions, the question that CIOs, CHROs, EAs and CEOs need to consider is what systems must be able to do to support augmented work — and where they fall short today.
These are big questions that must be answered collaboratively. Once again, enterprise architects need to take center stage.
12 skills CIOs say workers need to stay relevant
Lastly, I asked CIOs about the skills that workers should develop to be relevant in an AI-driven future. Their answers were synthesized into 12 skill recommendations.
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AI fluency. Understand how AI models work — how they ingest, process and validate data — and where their limitations lie.
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Human judgment. Apply critical thinking to assess AI outputs, especially when something feels off or incomplete.
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Problem-solving. Ability to frame the right questions and use AI to accelerate better, more informed decisions.
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Ethical responsibility and AI safety awareness. Understand how AI is used responsibly, with attention to bias, risk, accountability and governance.
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Adaptability. Ability to continuously adjust to rapidly evolving tools, workflows and business expectations.
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Continuous learning mindset. Commitment to ongoing skill development as AI reshapes roles and required capabilities.
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Business acumen. Understand core business goals, processes and value drivers to ensure AI delivers meaningful outcomes.
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Process and systems thinking. Ability to reimagine workflows end-to-end — moving from isolated tasks to integrated, AI-enabled outcomes.
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Creativity and innovation. Identify new data sets, use cases and ways AI can unlock value — not just optimize existing work.
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Communication and translation skills. Bridge technical and business worlds by explaining AI concepts in clear, actionable terms.
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Cross-functional collaboration. Work effectively across IT, HR and business units as AI becomes embedded in every function.
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Outcome orientation. Focus on building systems that deliver predictive insights and measurable business impact.
This is a strong list. Clearly, the degree of fluency and process and systems thinking will be different for IT and business workers. But all workers need to be AI savvy to a degree.
What CIOs can’t afford to get wrong
This article argues that this is a moment for CIOs to step up and partner deeply across the organization. It also highlights a critical opportunity for enterprise architects to help define the path forward. Delivering on this opportunity will require discipline and strong collaboration. Success will depend on building the right mix of skills. The winners in the AI era won’t be defined by technical depth alone, but by their ability to combine human capabilities — judgment, creativity, ethics — with AI as a partner to drive business outcomes.
