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

The Human Connection Podcast · Sep 3, 2026 · 22m

"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…