Your Executive Team Never Learned to Lead People. AI Just Proved It | Adam Johnson

"Surveillance is power over people. Visibility is power with people."Adam Johnson has led AI strategy work inside Microsoft and Amazon, and now spends his days telling mid-sized companies the thing they don't want to hear: their AI rollout isn't failing because of the technology. It's failing because they never built the trust required to roll anything out successfully in the first place.Karl and Adam dig into why so many AI initiatives are stalling out, why the resulting layoffs are less about AI and more about years of leadership teams optimizing for systems instead of people, and what it actually takes to rebuild the kind of trust that lets an organization move fast without breaking itself.What you'll get from this episode:Why most AI rollouts fail — and it's rarely the technologyThe leadership skill gap AI adoption has quietly exposed across executive teamsThe real difference between surveillance and visibility, and why only one builds a functioning orgWhy blaming layoffs on AI often masks years of overhiring and weak strategyAdam's concept of "evolutionary capitalism" — treating profit as a constraint instead of the goal#H2H #HumanConnectionPodcast #StartupLeadership #CompanyCulture #AIStrategy===You can connect with Adam Johnson here:raferconsulting.lovable.applinkedin.com/in/adam-johnson-454277calendar.app.google/gsdRqLPjUyZWtXDSAYou can connect with Karl Pontau here:www.vouchedconnections.comwww.thehumanconnectionpodcast.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/kpontauhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbf_bDWwB9KVrFn5Sj3u2w?sub_confirmation=1Please like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you care about!