Shifting sands: aligning AI and culture in unstable times
Every leader will tell you that culture’s important, but in the age of AI it’s no longer a soft concept tucked into the back of the employee handbook. Now, with AI reshaping work, it’s the factor that decides whether an organisation stays aligned or unravels.
The fundamentals of how we work have been redrawn with a speed that would once have taken decades. Hybrid and remote models are now deeply embedded, with 42 percent of UK workers in hybrid arrangements and almost half saying they’d rather resign than return to the office full-time.
That shift alone has transformed the daily rhythms and informal interactions that hold organisations together. The rise of AI has layered another profound shift on top of this, one that feels more disruptive because it hasn’t followed the usual path of workplace technology adoption.
“In the past, there’s always been a playbook,” says Ben Horowitz, author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Major technology adoption used to be orchestrated from the top. A new CRM, intranet or project management platform would be planned carefully, rolled out in stages, and supported by training before anyone touched it.
AI hasn’t worked like that. Tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are easy to access, simple to use and often introduced by employees themselves rather than IT departments or leadership teams. Instead of waiting for permission, workers are experimenting on their own and redesigning their workflows in real time.
That creates a crunch point for leaders. Research shows that nearly two thirds of UK employees already use AI at work, yet almost three quarters have had no formal training, more than half don’t know if it’s officially allowed, and a third are using it quietly in the background. Many executives believe they’re in control of adoption, when in reality it’s already moving ahead without them.
Edgar Schein said, “The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture.” When AI is reshaping work faster than policies can keep up, that responsibility becomes impossible to delegate. Culture functions as the operating system of a business. It determines whether AI is used responsibly or recklessly, whether teams collaborate or work in silos, and whether innovation happens in the open or goes underground. In unstable times, culture’s the only system of control that can scale faster than the technology itself.
That doesn’t mean the answer lies in endless frameworks or heavy governance. The first step is usually the simplest: talk more. If leaders don’t explain how AI’s being used in the business, why it matters, and what it means for employees, people will supply their own answers, and those answers are often more damaging than the truth. Communicating early and often, even when the picture’s incomplete, builds trust in moments when trust is most at risk.
Another step is to create boundaries without shutting the door on AI. Outright bans rarely work, and they almost always drive more secretive use. At the same time, allowing unrestricted access can fragment processes and create risks that are harder to track.
The art is to set clear rules that guide usage without closing off experimentation. At twisted loop, for example, we don’t permit client deliverables to be written by generative AI, but we actively encourage its use for idea generation, refining language, and reviewing complex material. Boundaries evolve as tools advance, but clarity is always better than control for its own sake.
Businesses mustn’t look for a silver bullet when it comes to AI. It’s tempting to believe there’s a single tool or breakthrough that will transform everything overnight, but the reality is far more ordinary. The organisations that thrive won’t be the ones chasing shortcuts; they’ll be the ones putting in the unglamorous work of embedding new habits.
That means hiring for adaptability as much as technical skill. The people who carry culture forward aren’t always the most senior or the most technical; they’re the authentic informal leaders who understand the mood of the team, create momentum, and keep morale alive. In moments of instability, they’re the ones who bridge the gap between leadership intent and day-to-day execution.
For business owners and investors, the cultural conversation isn’t just abstract; it directly links to value creation. Companies that align culture and AI adoption tend to move faster, capture efficiencies earlier, and avoid the costly friction of shadow IT or fractured processes.
A strong cultural framework lowers the risk of compliance failures, accelerates scaling because teams trust the tools they’re given, and improves retention at a time when employees are more likely to leave if they feel excluded from the future. In practice, culture isn’t just keeping the organisation together - it’s actively compounding enterprise value.
Leaders also need to accept that the road ahead won’t be smooth. Some pilots will flop and some employees will resist, but these aren’t signs of cultural weakness; they’re opportunities for cultural strength. When people see leaders holding steady on principles, admitting mistakes, and staying engaged through the difficult patches, they gain confidence that the organisation can endure whatever comes next.
It’s tempting to believe that competitive advantage in the AI era will come from having the most advanced models, but access to those models is now widely available to almost everyone. What truly sets organisations apart is not the technology itself but the way their people choose to use it.
In companies where culture is brittle, the pressure of rapid change will expose fractures that are difficult to repair, while in those where culture is resilient, teams are more likely to absorb the shock, adapt quickly, and ultimately emerge stronger.
That’s why AI strategy and cultural strategy can’t be treated as separate conversations, they’re two sides of the same coin. Every AI inflection point, whether it’s the adoption of a new tool, the arrival of new funding or a change in leadership, is also a cultural inflection point. Leaders should treat it as such by mapping how AI’s already being used inside their business, identifying their culture carriers, setting principles that are flexible enough to evolve, and creating systems that surface better answers from both people and machines.
Satya Nadella put it simply: “Culture is how an organisation thinks and acts. If you change the culture, you change the game.” Over the next 18 to 24 months, as AI becomes embedded in core workflows, leaders won’t be debating whether it should be used but how to align it with identity and purpose.
Do employees still feel that their contributions matter when AI is embedded in the chain of delivery? Do customers understand the role of people versus machines in the value they’re buying? The businesses that look ahead now, anticipating these cultural shifts, will be far better placed to grow with confidence as the technology matures.
Embrace the struggle. AI will change your workflows whether you like it or not. Culture will decide whether those changes become accelerators of growth or sources of division and chaos.
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