Ease, friction and the cultivation of human capability
One of the most compelling promises of artificial intelligence is its capacity to remove friction from work.
Tasks that once consumed hours can be completed in minutes. Information can be synthesised almost instantly. Drafts can be produced from minimal instruction. Patterns can be identified across volumes of material that no individual could reasonably process alone.
In many cases, this represents genuine progress. There is little value in preserving unnecessary work simply because it is familiar, and there is enormous potential in releasing people from repetitive or low-value tasks.
But the New York convening raised a more difficult question:
What if some of the friction being removed was also playing a developmental role?
Leadership capability never forms solely through formal education or leadership programs. It develops through repeated exposure to difficulty, ambiguity and responsibility. People learn by making decisions without perfect information, struggling to articulate ideas, receiving feedback, testing assumptions and dealing with the consequences of being wrong.
Many of those experiences are inefficient.
They can also be formative.
The difficult first draft forces us to clarify what we think. A failed attempt exposes gaps in our understanding. An uncomfortable conversation develops our ability to listen across difference. Being challenged forces us to test the reasoning underneath a position rather than simply defend it.
Over time, these experiences help build the practical capabilities that we often describe as judgement.
If AI increasingly performs some of those tasks for us, the question is not whether we should resist the technology. Rather, we may need to become considerably more intentional about where and how human capability will now be developed.
This creates an important distinction between wasteful friction and productive friction.
Some friction consumes time without adding value and should be removed. Other forms of difficulty create conditions in which expertise, discernment, confidence and resilience are developed.
The challenge is that these forms of friction can look very similar when viewed purely through the lens of efficiency.
An organisation focused exclusively on speed may therefore unintentionally remove experiences that once helped people develop the very capabilities it continues to value.
This is where the idea of discernment becomes particularly important.
Judgement can sometimes be understood as an attribute or outcome — something a capable leader possesses. Discernment places greater emphasis on the process through which good decisions are reached: noticing, questioning, weighing competing considerations, listening, interpreting and remaining willing to revise a view as new information emerges.
Discernment is not simply possessed. it is practised.
If AI increasingly supplies the analysis, options and recommendations that precede decisions, leaders may need to think much more carefully about how that capacity continues to be cultivated.
What experiences should people still have for themselves? Where might someone need to wrestle with ambiguity before receiving an answer? How do people learn to distinguish between something that sounds plausible and something that is well grounded?
And what happens to leadership development when the technology can increasingly bypass the processes through which people historically developed those capacities?
For decades, many important leadership capabilities have emerged incidentally through work itself. People gained experience because completing the work required them to develop it.
As AI absorbs more routine cognitive labour, organisations may no longer be able to assume that those developmental experiences will occur naturally.
Leadership development may therefore need to become much more deliberate and rather than asking only which tasks AI can perform, organisations may also need to ask which human capacities they are seeking to strengthen, and what kinds of experiences will allow people to continue practising them.
The opportunity here is significant, AI could release people from enormous amounts of low-value work. The question is what we choose to do with the capacity that creates.
If we simply use it to accelerate output, we may gain efficiency while overlooking development. If we use it deliberately, there may be an opportunity to redirect human attention towards deeper forms of inquiry, creativity, relationships, interpretation and responsibility.
The leadership question is therefore not only What can AI do for us? It is also: What must we continue to do for ourselves?
As the Leadership in the AI Era series continues, the distinction between removing unnecessary friction and deliberately cultivating human capability is one we will continue to explore.
Leadership in the AI Era is an international convening series led by the Menzies Leadership Foundation in collaboration with the Aspen Institute Socrates Program.
