What changes, and what doesn’t, when AI enters the room. A conversation series on the human side of AI adoption. Hosted by Douglas Ferguson.
For thirty years, the friction in knowledge work was the stuff facilitators are built for. Alignment. Decision making. Getting the right people in the room and getting them to agree on what’s next.
AI is quietly changing what the friction even is.
When anyone on the team can generate a plausible answer in seconds, the bottleneck moves. It moves to judgment. To trust. To knowing which answer to act on, who’s accountable when it’s wrong, and how to keep the team actually thinking instead of outsourcing the thinking to a model that sounds confident.
That’s the New Friction. It’s not less work for facilitators. It’s different work. And it’s the work that decides whether AI adoption actually lands or stalls out in a pile of abandoned pilots.
This series is where we explore it. One conversation at a time.
One hub, three formats, one thesis.
In the inaugural episode of New Friction, host Douglas Ferguson and Erik Skogsberg explore how AI has shifted organizational friction from execution to decision-making and alignment. While AI accelerates production, it magnifies existing dysfunctions
New Friction is a podcast from Douglas Ferguson on the real organizational challenges of AI transformation. AI made execution almost free but most organizations are still stuck. Not because the technology doesn’t work, but
Writing on what changes, and what doesn’t, when AI enters the room. Field notes from real engagements and the patterns showing up across leadership teams making AI stick.
We run AI transformation engagements for leadership teams navigating adoption inside real organizations. Facilitation-led, pragmatic, and built for the messy middle.
New episodes, essays, and field notes on the human side of AI adoption. Sent when there’s something worth sending.
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