Matthew Atherfold

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20262 min read

Irish Management Institute · Programme Director & Faculty

Designed IMI's flagship 'Leading the Human-AI Workforce' executive programme.

Two-day immersive programme at IMI Sandyford for senior leaders. Built around workflow-first thinking, three hands-on use cases, and a 12-month hybrid workforce capstone, participants build a working digital worker before they learn to lead one.

Case at a glance— 01
Problem type

Turn AI into operating capability

The mandate

Design a leadership programme, not a technical one, that takes mid-to-senior managers from awareness to capability in two days, against IMI's High Impact Transformation 2.0 learning model.

Workstreams

1

Distinct parts of the intervention

Headline result

2 days

Immersive in-person

Measured outcomes— 02
2 days
Immersive in-person
3
Concrete outputs per leader
10–20
Cohort size
HIT 2.0
IMI learning model
The situation— 03
Context

What was happening.

McKinsey reports two to three people now manage 50–100 AI agents inside a single workflow. Gartner forecasts a 25% reduction in operational costs by 2026 for organisations that redistribute management responsibility to AI. Most AI training teaches tools or stays at the strategy level, neither prepares leaders to scope problems, design hybrid workflows, and lead the result.

Mandate

What had to change.

Design a leadership programme, not a technical one, that takes mid-to-senior managers from awareness to capability in two days, against IMI's High Impact Transformation 2.0 learning model.

What changed

The moves that made the difference.

The intervention, broken into the moves that mattered.

01

Highlights

6 moves
  • Designed the programme against IMI's HIT 2.0 framework: Prime, Reframe, Disrupt, Immerse, Experiment, Fuse and Sustain, building a digital worker is the immersive disruption, the capstone is the fuse.
  • Structured three levels across two days: Understand (workflow-first thinking + opportunity scoring), Build (three hands-on use cases, decision support, knowledge management, human-AI orchestration), Lead (hybrid workforce design, governance, trust and capstone).
  • Authored an opportunity scoring framework so participants score and map digital-worker value across their own functions, HR, ops, finance, marketing, CX and transformation.
  • Designed three concrete participant outputs: an Opportunity Map for their function, a Working Digital Worker tied to their role, and a 12-month Hybrid Workforce Plan presented to the cohort.
  • Built post-programme continuity, participants retain access to IMI's Digital Lab to keep applying the model on their own problems.
  • Targeted at cohorts of 10–20 mid-to-senior managers, sold via HR directors and L&D leaders, delivered open or in-house.
What I would carry forward
“You cannot effectively lead digital workers without having built one. Just as the best engineering managers have been engineers, the best leaders of hybrid workforces will be those who understand their digital workers from the inside.”
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