When strategy needs people – why CEOs and CPOs need to lead AI transformation together

1. Why are you involved in The CEO×CPO Room?
Because it’s the exact gap I see when I’m working with CEOs directly. In almost every strategy conversation I’ve had, the same pattern shows up: the thing standing between a business and real growth isn’t the strategy itself, it’s people and culture. That’s now built into how we run every strategy engagement: there’s always a people and structure piece in what comes next, not just a plan on a page. EMA and Best Places to Work were seeing the same gap from their side, so building a working session around it made more sense than any of us writing another report about it.

2. Why is the relationship between the CEO and CPO so important right now?
They’re the two leaders most responsible for shaping where an organisation ends up. When strategy, workforce planning, capability and technology transformation get handled separately instead of together, execution is where it falls over, not because the plan was wrong, but because nobody owned how the plan would actually land on people.

3. Why is this conversation particularly relevant in 2026?
Deloitte’s latest research puts a number on something most leaders already feel: 87% of New Zealand leaders say future workforce planning is a priority, but very few can point to real progress building the leadership, culture and conditions AI transformation actually needs. That’s not a lack of intent, it’s a gap between deciding something matters and doing anything about it. And that gap isn’t holding steady, it’s getting wider, which means the businesses that move now will pull further ahead, and the ones that wait will find the distance harder to close every year.

4. What’s the biggest mistake leaders are making on future workforce planning?
Treating it as HR’s job to solve on its own. Workforce planning gets built as a people-team initiative instead of a strategic one, which means it’s the first thing that gets deprioritised when the CEO’s attention moves somewhere else.

5. What can attendees expect from The CEO×CPO Room?
A working session, not a stage. There’s no keynote handing down answers. It’s structured peer conversation between CEOs and CPOs who are genuinely grappling with the same problem. We use a design thinking process to actually build something in the room together, not just talk, and what comes out of it gets shared back with everyone who was there. That’s the point of the format: put that many brains and that much real experience in one room, and the group works through things faster than any one of us would alone.

6. What makes this event different from other leadership events?
Both leaders are in the room at the same time, working on the same problem together, rather than one function sending a delegate to represent the other. And the content isn’t built around a speaker’s opinion. It’s grounded in Deloitte’s research and Best Places to Work’s data, so the conversation starts from evidence rather than a trend.

7. How is AI changing leadership?
It’s the biggest leadership challenge I’ve seen in my lifetime. Work is changing, and it’s not changing back. The way businesses can transform now has no real precedent. But the human element is still the most important part of it. It’s changing what leaders are actually deciding: it used to be enough to set direction and let teams execute, and now leaders are making constant calls about where human judgement sits versus where a tool or a model should. That’s a design decision, not a technology rollout.

8. What role should CEOs play in AI transformation?
An active one, and a hands-on one. This isn’t something a CEO can learn from a briefing paper. You learn it by doing it, in real decisions, not in a workshop about it. It can’t just sit with the digital or IT team either, because the hardest parts of AI transformation aren’t technical, they’re about culture, trust and how decisions get made. Culture is what lets a company and its people actually stretch into this, and stretching is exactly what’s required right now. That’s a CEO-and-CPO conversation, not a systems one.

9. Where are organisations getting stuck?
Right at the start, if I’m honest. Most leaders are looking for a plan to manage this, and this isn’t something you can manage your way through. It has to be led. AI ends up sitting in the IT budget, workforce readiness gets treated as a training course, and culture gets talked about at the leadership offsite and then quietly parked when everyone’s back at their desks. The organisations getting stuck are the ones waiting for a clear enough picture to build a proper plan. The ones making progress are leading through it without one.

10. Why is adaptability becoming such a critical capability?
The old approach of setting a plan, running it for a year, and reviewing it assumes a level of certainty leaders don’t have anymore. Adaptability is really about building the judgement and capacity to make good calls without waiting for the picture to become clear, because it usually doesn’t in time to matter. It’s also where I think New Zealand businesses have a genuine edge. We’re good at absorbing change and turning it into something useful rather than just surviving it. Harnessed properly, that’s not just a defence, it’s the opportunity.

11. How should leaders think about productivity in the age of AI?
Less about output per person, more about how well people and AI are actually set up to work together. Deloitte’s data backs this up directly: organisations that intentionally design that interaction are twice as likely to exceed their AI ROI expectations and two and a half times more likely to report strong financial results.

12. What leadership qualities will matter most over the next five years?
Judgement, more than certainty. The leaders who do well won’t be the ones with the most confident answers, they’ll be the ones comfortable making decisions with incomplete information, and willing to build strategy and people plans together instead of in sequence. I’d add curiosity and openness to that list too, and a willingness to make risk a team sport rather than something the CEO carries alone.

13. What are you hearing from CEOs right now?
A lot of pressure to be seen moving on AI, and real uncertainty underneath it about what “ready” actually looks like operationally. Several have told me they’re more worried about being caught flat-footed than about getting the technology choice wrong. And more of them are willing to say that out loud than you’d expect: to be open about not having all the answers, rather than performing certainty they don’t feel.

14. What are you hearing from Chief People Officers?
Honestly, the bigger issue is there aren’t enough of them in the room to begin with. A lot of organisations don’t have a genuine CPO at the leadership table, so it’s COOs and CIOs who are increasingly having to pick up the people dimension of decisions that were never theirs to own alone. That gap is exactly why this matters: people are the system. Leave that role empty or under-resourced and strategy, structure and technology decisions all get made without the one input that determines whether any of it actually works.

15. Why is leadership alignment so important?
Alignment is everything. Misalignment is what actually kills execution speed. It’s rarely the strategy itself that’s the problem, it’s that the people meant to deliver it were never properly brought into how it was built. Get the alignment right and you can build what I’d call structured autonomy: clear enough direction that teams don’t need to check in on every decision, which is what actually lets a business and its people move at pace.

16. What is the value of networking with peers at this event?
Every CEO and CPO in that room is working on some version of the same problem, usually without much chance to compare notes with people outside their own organisation. What they get out of it is new ideas, different perspectives, and suggestions they can genuinely try the following week, plus connections they wouldn’t have made otherwise. Nobody has to work this out alone, and that’s easy to forget when you’re heads-down running a business.

17. What do you hope attendees take away from the discussion?
Not a playbook. There isn’t one yet, for anyone. What we do instead is run a proper design thinking process in the room: surface what’s really going on, work through it together, and synthesise it into a shared roadmap: concrete choices and a practical sequence for what to do next. It’s built by the group, not handed to them, and everyone in the room will get a copy of what they helped create. I want them to leave with a clearer next step, more confidence to act on it, and the sense that they’re not the only ones working this out.