AI-isms: Drift | Kelly Monahan | Is AI accelerating leadership drift?

Nobody takes a leadership job planning to burn people out. And yet that is how most workforces would describe the people leading them. So something happens along the way.Kelly Monahan has spent fifteen years studying how organizations actually work, at Deloitte, Accenture, Meta and Upwork, and now at Beyond the Desk, the company she co-founded. In her book Reclaim the Plot, out this month, she gives that something a name. Drift. The slow slide away from the values that got you into leadership in the first place. Metrics over meaning, performance over purpose, control over trust.In this episode I ask Kelly the question I have been sitting with since I read her early pages. Is AI accelerating drift?Her answer is not the one I expected. AI does not change people. The pressure around it does. A gap between what AI companies promise, what boards then expect, and what implementation delivers, on top of a market that pays two to three times the valuation for anything that can call itself an AI company. Leaders drift into that gap.So I put Kelly in the hot seat with three CEOs in trouble, one for each stage of her book. The Drift. The Delirium. The Dream.What we get into:• Why the power paradox makes drift close to inevitable, and how to design against it• The expectation gap that turns AI adoption into performative theatrics• Why a one-year AI roadmap is the tell• The AI-ism minted live: sometimes the right answer is no AI• What a leader has to say out loud to bring a drifted organization back• Two AI-isms for leaders running an AI transformation, two for the employees living through one• Why your body tells you when you have drifted, before your dashboard doesKelly also names three times she drifted herself, including the year Meta went from the year of learning to the year of efficiency.Chapters00:00 The conversation around leadership has shifted01:41 Meet Kelly Monahan02:21 We have lost the plot on what AI is for04:05 What drift is05:55 The power paradox07:13 Is AI accelerating drift?08:03 The expectation gap08:35 Performative theatrics09:05 Stop chasing the one-year roadmap11:10 Case one, the Drift15:44 Redefining value, from labour to capital17:50 Case two, the Delirium19:34 Solve the business problem before you buy the technology21:30 Sometimes the right answer is no AI22:52 Commoditising the very thing that made you different24:08 Case three, the Dream26:45 Humility, ego, and what a workforce needs to hear29:38 Community is the answer31:22 Two AI-isms for leaders32:40 Two AI-isms for employees35:05 Kelly's own drift39:20 The body tells you when you have driftedThis is AI-isms, human rhythms in a synthetic world. AI will not correct a leader who has drifted. It will hand them a faster way to keep going.Guest: Dr. Kelly Monahan, co-founder, Beyond the Desk. Author of Reclaim the Plot (Wiley, September 2026).Host: Shulagna Dasgupta.