The Question Behind the Headline
Meta laid off around 8,000 employees and moved 7,000 others into AI-focused roles.
The layoffs got a lot of attention, but I kept thinking about the employees who were reassigned. What are they being asked to do? They are now helping to build systems that could one day decide how much of their own work remains relevant. That is not a small ask. We have seen this kind of workforce shift, often described as an opportunity or a transition.
Lindsay Jessup, CEO of Geeks Ltd, wrote something for us worth reading twice. She said your AI works fine. The real bottleneck is decision-making. Figuring out which problems matter, which tradeoffs to accept, and which direction to take when several options seem equally valid. That is still human work. But it is harder than most organizations have prepared their people for.
Richard Hua, founder & CEO of EPIQ Leadership Group, observed in his article that even skilled teams can struggle with major change, and that the reason is usually cultural. When things feel uncertain, people look to their leaders. If leaders demand speed but react harshly to mistakes, people hesitate. Teams hold back precisely when they need to move.
Both observations point to the same problem. Organizations are asking people to move faster while creating conditions that make movement feel dangerous.
Somayeh Aghnia, co-founder of the London School of Innovation, raised the deeper question. Most organizations think about AI in two stages: what it saves now, and what new value it creates next. But there is a third important stage. When AI can do more of what the organization was built to do, the question shifts from efficiency to purpose. Why does this organization exist?
That question is always present in workforce change.
Most workforce announcements tell you who is staying and who is leaving. Very few tell you what the organization is actually becoming.
If you’re leading through these changes, what are you asking your team to build? And how are you protecting trust as they do it?