On Culture: Rebuilding Trust at the Speed of Change

Myste Wylde
Oct 9
5 min read

Dear Culturati Insider,

We’re leading through a time of disruption. While we optimize for efficiency we must hold onto our integrity, accelerate transformation without eroding trust, automate without erasing autonomy, and drive growth while guarding against burnout. The need to communicate clearly and act deliberately is critical. The challenge is holding multiple tensions at once, advancing progress while keeping our work anchored in trust, care, and the human experience...and doing all of this at speed.

Maintaining trust requires coherence and clarity—designing systems that reflect the values we serve. As agentic AI reshapes work, executives are making consequential choices about automation, augmentation, and agency that will determine how value and control are distributed. Frontier organizations are becoming human-led and agent-operated. We’re seeing new patterns of human-AI collaboration, especially in software development, now spreading across industries and functions, among businesses of all sizes.

Courageous leaders grant agency as an act of trust. When people feel empowered to shape the path forward, they invest in the process of change and embrace it as their own. Research shows that employees absorb disruption more effectively when they're involved in it. Our leadership practices shape employee experience and should be elevated; global engagement remains stuck at 21% and 44% of employees report daily stress (Gallup).

We don’t get to slow the world down, but we do decide how we move through it. And we choose with clarity, purpose, and hope. Speed without reflection breaks trust, and reflection without action stalls progress. As we saw in last week’s Culturati: LIVE with NXP’s Chris Jensen and Dana Larsen, organizations that operate with both precision and purpose can move faster and build stronger cultures at the same time. The work now is to integrate both, creating systems where technology amplifies humanity rather than eclipsing it.

For progress AND people,

Myste Wylde, COO

The Change Agent: Goals, Decisions, and Implications for CEOs in the Agentic Age

McKinsey & Company

By Alex Singla, Alexander Sukharevsky, Lari Hämäläinen, Oana Cheta, Olli Salo, Pallav Jain, Raghav Raghunathan, Sandra Durth, Stéphane Bout, and Vito Di Leo

Summary: Some companies are retreating from early gen-AI bets after limited ROI, but Gartner’s John Lovelock calls this the “trough of disillusionment,” a phase that precedes mass adoption and long-term value creation. McKinsey argues that AI agents (autonomous systems capable of planning, acting, and learning) will fundamentally reshape operations and value creation. Early pilots have shown 40–50% faster execution and over 40% cost reduction in modernization projects, while initial enterprise deployments deliver 3–5% annual productivity gains, rising to 10%+ as multi-agent workflows scale (McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2025). By 2030, up to 30% of current work hours could be automated, driving a structural shift in how organizations allocate talent and capital (McKinsey Global Institute). Near-term goals include 25–50% of employees using enterprise agents daily, 70% automation in targeted end-to-end processes, and 60–80% of service requests handled autonomously with equal or better customer satisfaction. Now may be the moment for CEOs to rearchitect workflows based on speed, clarity, and purpose.

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AI@Work: 3 New Patterns of Work Define AI-First Companies

Microsoft WorkLab

By Jared Spataro

Summary: AI adoption in the workplace has doubled in just two years, and a new class of “Frontier Firms” is showing what happens when organizations move from experimentation to full integration. These companies are human-led and agent-operated, redesigning workflows for speed, scale, and compounding intelligence. Microsoft identifies three dominant patterns: Human + AI assistants that remove busywork and lift productivity; Human–agent teams where AI executes defined steps to increase throughput and reduce friction; and Human-led, agent-operated systems that automate end-to-end workflows under human oversight. In software development, these models have cut testing and deployment cycles from weeks to days, allowing small teams to move from idea to demo in hours. The same transformation is spreading to sales, service, finance, and marketing—anywhere work can be measured, repeated, and improved. CEOs should note that the frontier isn’t about layering AI onto existing routines but rebuilding work around it with intentional design.

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Why Agency Helps Employees Cope With Change

MIT Sloan Management Review

By Nick Smallman and Dan Parry

Summary: Change often triggers confusion, resistance, and dips in morale, but employees adapt faster when they regain a sense of control. Research shows that successful transitions follow six emotional stages from shock to approval and that true buy-in depends on agency, not communication alone. Leaders who give teams input into how changes are implemented, allow them to set short-term goals, and involve them in testing new tools see stronger engagement and faster recovery of performance. During the pandemic, organizations that gave employees flexibility in adapting to remote work maintained higher productivity than those that imposed rigid processes. Granting even limited autonomy builds ownership and resilience. The paradox of change is that slowing down to listen and empower people often speeds adoption and strengthens commitment.

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It’s Time to Move Past Employee Engagement

Psychology Today

By Mark C. Crowley

Summary: After two decades and billions spent on engagement surveys, global engagement remains stalled at 21%, while burnout and daily stress have reached record highs. 44% of employees report significant stress every workday, and U.S. engagement has fallen to 31%, its lowest in a decade (Gallup). The failure lies not in the idea of engagement but in how it has been measured, data without accountability and metrics without meaning. Traditional annual surveys capture little of the real employee experience, which shifts week to week. Forward-looking organizations are replacing static engagement tools with pulse surveys that offer real-time insight, transparency, and accountability at the manager level (McKinsey Health Institute). These systems close the loop between feedback and action, helping leaders identify burnout early and respond before performance erodes. Engagement follows naturally when well-being becomes the foundation for trust, resilience, and sustainable success.

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