IGNITE THE WHY

News just in from the HR Professional AI conference in Athens in November, translated from the Greek by Google. BBC Chief People Officer Uzair Qadeer speaks out. 

INTERNATIONAL DIALOGUE

IGNITE THE WHY: REIMAGINING LEADERSHIP FOR AN AI-LED DIGITAL WORKPLACE

Participants had the opportunity to watch a special dialogue, through the stage discussion of Maria Vathylaki, HR Director Eurasia at Moët Hennessy (LVMH Group), with Uzair Qadeer, Chief People Officer of the BBC. “People may go to bed hungry, but when they feel free they go to bed with dreams,” said U. Qadeer. For him, this is also the core of the human factor in the AI ​​era: technology can execute, but it cannot create meaning. At the same time, he argued that the world of work is definitively abandoning the linear career path and moving towards a skills-based model, where development is more like a network of experiences than a ladder. AI, as he emphasized, does not replace humans, but moves their role: from execution to judgment, from control to emotional guidance, from processes to the release of potential. The discussion also touched on the intergenerational tension surrounding technology: millennials are eager to adopt it, Gen Z takes it for granted, while older generations experience uncertainty and fear of substitution. “People are not afraid of technology. They are afraid of the absence of a role within it,” he emphasized. In closing, he reiterated his central argument: the age of AI is a historic opportunity for leadership to rediscover its most authentic role. Artificial intelligence can write poetry, he said characteristically, but it cannot understand why we write it. The concept of “why” remains human—and this is the space where the next day of leadership will be judged.