The New P & L · 2026-05-29 · 11 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
35 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Paul explores whether AI represents an existential crisis or a different kind of organizational problem entirely. Drawing on dozens of executive roundtables across the UK and Europe with CTOs, CIOs, and Chief People Officers, he traces how AI conversations have evolved from "what is it?" to "how do we deploy it?" to "why do we even have it?" - often in the wrong sequence. Rather than an existential threat from AGI or artificial superintelligence, Paul identifies the real crisis as capability and adaptability gaps rooted in leadership and culture. When organizations roll out AI without clear business vision, aligned departments, or transparent communication to employees, the technology becomes a mirror reflecting all existing organizational dysfunction. Data poisoning - the deliberate corruption of training data - is already occurring internally when employees feel threatened rather than empowered. Leaders who treat AI as just another transactional tool rather than a transformational technology that will fundamentally reshape work itself will face their own existential crisis sooner than expected. The episode targets executives, transformation officers, and HR leaders grappling with AI implementation without strategic clarity.
No, according to Paul - the crisis is not existential but rather a capability and adaptability crisis rooted in poor leadership and culture. The real danger is that organizational dysfunction, when amplified by AI, could create a self-inflicted existential crisis before AGI even arrives.
Employees poison training data when they fear AI threatens their jobs and lack clear communication about upskilling paths or how AI benefits them personally. The disconnect between internal leadership messaging (productivity gains) and external narrative (AI is replacing workers) breeds frustration and distrust.
Transactional means using AI as a tool to fix specific problems. Transformational means recognizing AI will permanently reshape the nature of work, organizational structure, and business itself - requiring new leadership competencies, cultural shifts, and employee development strategies.
AI acts as a mirror reflecting existing organizational weaknesses: siloed departments, unclear vision, toxic culture, unclean data, weak privacy guardrails, and poor internal communication all become visible and amplified when AI is deployed across the business.
Leaders need foresight, emotional intelligence, and empathy to understand organizational fears and opportunities. They must also recognize AI is foundational and will change business structure itself, not just internal processes.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode makes some genuine structural arguments (capability vs. existential crisis framing, leadership/culture as root causes, AI as mirror) that are moderately useful, but relies heavily on repetition and abstract assertion rather than concrete examples or novel mechanisms. The core insight about capability and adaptability crises is solid but gets circled multiple times without deepening.
what I do think we have right now in our organisations is both a capability and an adaptability crisis. And the roots of both of these are leadership and culture.
AI is not just a tool it is foundational. It will over time change not just the way we do business, but the very nature of what a business is.
The framing of capability/adaptability crisis over existential crisis is reasonably fresh, and the 'mirror' metaphor for organizational dysfunction is apt, but the underlying arguments (leaders need new skills, culture matters, employees fear job loss) are well-worn in AI discourse. The data poisoning mention is concrete but brief and not deeply explored.
it could simply be the fear of what is happening that forces humanity or businesses to implode.
AI is equally a giant mirror reflecting back at organizations all of those things that are right or wrong with leadership and culture within that organization.
This is a solo monologue from the host with no guest present. While the host claims experience moderating roundtables with CTOs, CIOs, and senior executives, those voices are absent from this episode and their specific insights are not surfaced.
I'm Paul, I'm host of the new P&L Principles and Leadership and Business podcast series
this is a 10-minute podcast episode
The episode references roundtables with senior executives and mentions data poisoning, but provides almost no named companies, specific metrics, timelines, or concrete case studies. The evolution from 'what is AI' to 'why do we have it' is asserted but not evidenced with examples. Claims about productivity gains not meeting promises are mentioned but not quantified.
Over the last couple of years, I've had the privilege of hosting and moderating dozens of round tables in the UK and across Europe.
in part due to some of the productivity gains not meeting their original promise
This is an uninterrupted monologue with no guest to challenge, push back, or probe deeper. While the host structures arguments coherently and uses rhetorical techniques like Seneca's quote effectively, there is no conversational dynamic, no follow-up questions, and no exposure of reasoning through dialogue. The format precludes substantive conversational craft.
I'll caveat this conversation by saying that we, you and I, are not going to get to the bottom of all of the challenges and opportunities surrounding AI in a 10-minute podcast episode.
I'm really happy to have a conversation with you. to discuss this further and to dig a little bit deeper into some of those issues
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
In this episode of The New P&L TO THE POINT , Paul explores the growing conversation around AI that increasingly positions it as an ‘existential crisis’ for businesses and society. Drawing on insights from dozens of executive roundtablesheld across the UK and Europe with CIOs, CTOs, CMOs, HR leaders and transformation executives, Paul reflects on how the AI conversation has evolved at remarkable speed. In just a couple of years, organisations have rapidly shifted from asking What is AI? to How do we deploy it? and now increasingly Why are we using it in the first place? At the heart of the discussion is a critical observation: many organisations approached AI implementation in reverse order. Businesses rushed into experimentation and deployment before establishing strategic clarity around purpose, culture and long-term impact. According to Paul, this is where the real challenge lies. Rather than focusing solely on future fears around AGI orsuperintelligence, this episode argues that today’s AI crisis is more immediate and human: a leadership, capability and adaptability crisis.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Right at the moment, I don't think we have an existential crisis when it comes to AI. But what I do think we have right now in our organisations is both a capability and an adaptability crisis. And the roots of both of these are leadership and culture. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the latest The New P&L episode and the second The New P&L Point episode of the new series.
I'm Paul, I'm host of the new P&L Principles and Leadership and Business podcast series, and I'm really glad you've taken the time to join us today. For those who are not familiar with the new P&L to the Point format specifically, it's where I take a specific topic of interest, perhaps it's been a point raised in a discussion with one of my guests, or it might be just a point or a topical issue that I see out there in the world that I want to explore in a little bit more detail.
This week I'm going to explore AI and my views on the crisis label that seems to be so often sitting around and closely attached to it. I'll caveat this conversation by saying that we, you and I, are not going to get to the bottom of all of the challenges and opportunities surrounding AI in a 10-minute podcast episode. But I do want to explore a little further the existential crisis point that is frequently made by commentators when discussing AI and its impact on business and society more generally.
Over the last couple of years, I've had the privilege of hosting and moderating dozens of round tables in the UK and across Europe. And in each of these round tables, it's involved an incredible mix of senior executives, CTOs, CIOs, CPOs, Chief People Officers, CMOs, Chief Marketing Officers, Senior Data Engineering and Transformation and HR executives from major brands and major industries, all coming together, 15 or 20 of them at a time, to reflect on the challenges and opportunities AI presents, their industries and their roles.
And given the rapid innovation and product innovation evolution of AI over the last two years, I've also seen the conversations around AI, agentic AI and so on, evolve at a rapid pace. in just two or three years of doing these conversations of hosting these roundtables I've seen it go from what is AI to how do we deploy it to now why do we have it in the first place what role is it actually serving within our organizations in part due to some of the productivity gains not meeting their original promise I guess one of the biggest ironies I also see in the sequence of what I've just outlined what to how to why that it's probably the wrong way around We should have started with why But the pace of change has been so dramatic when it comes to AI that most organisations and leadership teams and boards have had to get on with the what and the how and then try to retrofit the why.
And that, in essence, is the point of my discussion today. So I don't know whether we're at the point, or that we might be in some near future of an existential crisis when it comes to AI. Much, much bigger brains than my mind working on that and I guess part of the fundamental challenge with that is actually defining existential and the context of AI. Is it when we reach, if we do, artificial general intelligence or artificial super intelligence or is it sometime before that when the crisis is not necessarily the power of the technology itself but a crisis created by the fear of what might come, what might be.
And that's a nuance I know but I think it's an important distinction because we so often in our lives recoil or stop doing things as a result of the perceived fears or as Seneca's stoic phrase goes we suffer more in imagination than in reality so I don't know whether we're doing that right now whether we're suffering more in imagination than reality when it comes to AI but certainly sometimes I feel like we are so whether we get to AGI to artificial general intelligence might almost be ironically irrelevant, because it could simply be the fear of what is happening that forces humanity or businesses to implode.
Clearly I don't know the tipping point for that, I'm not qualified to know, few of us do, and even those that are qualified don't really know either from what I read, ultimately because it's hard to see a cliff when it's over the horizon, but when you run towards it at speed you may come across it quicker than you anticipate. So in my view, based on the experience and the work I do, the conversations I have with guests and peers on the roundtables and on this podcast and the conferences I keynote at, what is abundantly clear is that where we are at with AI at the moment is a genuine inflection point in our relationship with technology.
And that inflection point requires a revolution in our consciousness when it comes to AI, the way we think about it, the way we engage with it, the way we deploy it. It is not a product, it's a peer, sitting alongside us, and that requires a major shift in mindset and strategy in business. Because whatever else AI is from a technology perspective, it is equally a giant mirror reflecting back at organizations all of those things that are right or wrong with leadership and culture within that organization.
So if you don have a clear vision for your business if it not aligned across the organization and all of the departmental organs of that organization operational marketing logistics strategic administrative and if leadership doesn truly understand how advanced technologies can underpin and transform all of those elements of a business then rolling out AI across that business will hold a mirror up to all of that LLM's large language models learning from fragmented low quality unclean data sets or limited data because the silos across those departments haven't been broken down or unsafe data because the guardrails and the privacy protocols that should be the foundations of AI integration are an afterthought or just not really a thought at all.
And if the culture that exists within your business is toxic or passive rather than empowering and collaborative and active, then AI will also hold a giant mirror up to that as well because employees will see AI as a threat rather than a help, because there's no context and leaders are tone deaf to the narrative employees hear outside the four walls of those organisations. So inside those four walls, leaders might be talking about the productivity and efficiency gains of AI. And outside, or employees are hearing, is AI is coming for your job.
So they feel disenfranchised and disengaged, as there's no clear upskilling path for them to grow. And if you don't believe me, do a quick search on the term data poisoning. That's the purposeful inputting of corrupt or malicious data into a large language model, so it learns off the wrong data. And this is not just an issue with malicious external actors.
There is some growing evidence of it happening within side companies as well, led by those who come from a position of frustration or fear, because the context and the clarity and the consistency of communicating the benefits to employees, not just to the company, is mostly or entirely absent. So right at the moment, in my view, we don't have an existential crisis when it comes to AI. However, if in a year you're listening to the new P&L and hear a synthetic voice as host and I've been replaced, then I will concede I'm wrong.
But right at the moment, I don't think we have an existential crisis when it comes to AI. But what I do think we have right now in our organizations is both a capability and an adaptability crisis. And the roots of both of these are leadership and culture. From a leadership perspective, it's adaptability.
Leaders with a new or refined set of leadership skills that are needed to lead in the age of AI. with both the foresight and the intelligence and the empathy to understand the extent of the challenge we have where the opportunities are and what the fears within their organizations also might be The ability to recognise that AI is not just a tool it is foundational It will over time change not just the way we do business, but the very nature of what a business is. What its constituent parts are, and it leads on to capabilities.
the cultural element, how we are building a culture that feels empowered by the extent of this AI-led transformation, one that clearly understands why and has a clear upskilling path that enables them as employees to build the capabilities they need to embrace what will become a fundamentally new way of working over the next few years. So the crisis is not existential. The crisis is adaptability and capability, leadership and culture, the way both of those elements respond to the speed of change driven by AI.
This in my view is where the crisis is. Leaders and businesses believing that AI is just another technology toolset, and that the training frameworks that have always worked in the past will work for AI as well. I just don't believe this to be true. Because AI will not be and is not just a transactional technology.
It's not just I have problem A, so let's fix it with technology or product solution B. It is not transactional. It is transformational. It will forever change the why, the what and the how we work.
And those leaders and organizations that don't recognize or acknowledge the adaptability and capability crisis now and address it with urgency will be, I believe, actually those who will have their own existential crisis sooner than expected. Thanks so much for listening to the new P&L To The Point today. Really appreciate you taking the time. If this has piqued your interest, if it sparked your interest, if you're thinking about this within your own organisation, just reach out.
I'm really happy to have a conversation with you. to discuss this further and to dig a little bit deeper into some of those issues that I've talked about today and that we face when we look at the possibilities, the probabilities and the challenges with AI moving forward within our businesses. I'm Paul, host of the new P&L To The Point, host of the new P&L Principles and Leadership and Business podcast series. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me today.
And I look forward to speaking with you again soon. Thank you.
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