I’ve been in a lot of rooms lately — boardrooms, roundtables, lunches with senior leaders. The AI conversation is relentless. But the word that keeps appearing on whiteboards isn’t AI. It isn’t strategy. It isn’t growth.
The word on every whiteboard
Belonging.
Across every room, every industry, every seniority level — when leaders are really being honest about what keeps them up at night, it’s this. Not which model to use. Not the ROI. The question of whether AI makes people feel more or less at home in their own companies.
Thirty-five leaders. One room. Real talk.
A few weeks ago I hosted an AI Leaders Lunch in Sydney. Thirty-five senior leaders from ecommerce, retail, tech, marketing, and people & culture. The kind of room where nobody’s pretending to have the answers — because nobody does. That’s exactly what made it useful.
Since then I’ve been at a retail and property roundtable, received an award from Women Chiefs of Enterprises International, and spent a day planning what’s next with Janine Garner and Inner Circle. Different rooms. Different industries. Different stakes. But when I looked back at my notes — and at what someone actually wrote on the whiteboard — the same word kept appearing.
Why belonging keeps showing up in an AI conversation.
Here’s what I’ve noticed: when you strip away the jargon and the benchmarks and the vendor pitches, the AI conversation always circles back to people. Specifically — to how people feel. Whether they feel included in the decisions being made. Whether they trust the technology being rolled out. Whether they feel like AI is being done with them or to them.
This isn’t soft. It’s one of the most strategic things a leader can get right. The organisations I see moving fastest with AI adoption aren’t the ones with the biggest tech budgets. They’re the ones where people feel safe to experiment — and safe to fail. That requires a culture of belonging. Which means it requires intentional leadership.
“The organisations moving fastest with AI aren’t the ones with the biggest tech budgets. They’re the ones where people feel safe to experiment — and safe to fail.”
What this means for ecommerce and retail leaders.
If you’re leading a retail or ecommerce brand right now, the AI questions you’re being asked to answer are getting harder and faster. Which tools to adopt. How to train your team. When to automate and when to keep the human in the loop. These are real, pressing decisions.
But underneath all of them is the same question I keep hearing in every room: will my people feel like they belong in the future we’re building? Because if the answer is no — if AI adoption becomes something that erodes trust, widens fear, or makes people feel replaceable — no amount of optimised ad spend or automated copy will save your culture. Or your customer relationships.
What the rooms kept saying
🟡 AI adoption is a people problem first. Technology is rarely the blocker — trust, fear, and exclusion are.
🟡 Speed requires psychological safety. Teams move faster when they feel safe to experiment without judgment.
🟡 Belonging is a competitive advantage. Cultures where people feel included out-adopt and out-adapt those that don’t.
🟡 The AI conversation needs more human voices. Not just the tech leads. Not just the C-suite. Everyone who’ll be affected.
Where I land on this.
I don’t think the belonging conversation is separate from the AI strategy conversation. I think it is the AI strategy conversation — at least, it should be. If you’re building an AI roadmap that doesn’t account for how your people will feel inside it, you’re solving half the problem.
The most effective AI strategies I’ve seen are the ones led by people who stay curious — not just about tools, but about their teams. Who ask: who’s in the room when we make these decisions? Who isn’t? What do our people need to feel like this technology is working for them, not around them?
The word on the whiteboard wasn’t a surprise to me. It’s the same thing I keep coming back to, regardless of which technology we’re talking about. Get the belonging right. The rest tends to follow.
