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Much of the conversation about AI in the workplace has focused on investment and upside potential. Yet organizations must also address the second-order risks of AI adoption, meaning the unintended consequences that emerge in execution, culture, and the employee experience as AI use scales. A new HBR article from Gartner’s HR practice highlights nine AI-era trends that reveal where AI can create risk in the workforce, including premature AI-driven layoffs that lead to costly rehiring, low-quality output that fuels “workslop” as employees are pushed to deliver more with less time for quality checks, and rising distrust in hiring as automation expands. One area that stood out to me is the warning that AI can create operating conditions that drive unrealistic performance pressures, quietly eroding results. While this is framed as an AI issue, the broader lesson applies to any ways of working that enable—or hinder—an organization’s ability to achieve its goals. With that in mind, I’m resharing my editable one-page cheat sheet that helps leaders and teams identify which current work practices may hinder goal achievement. It’s anchored in one question: “If we fast-forward to year-end and fell short of this objective, which ways of working would we say got in our own way?” From there, teams can pinpoint two to three actions to turn risk into a performance advantage.
