Chapter 7 of Work Disrupted: Leaders as Coaches and Designers

Lisa Bowman

Master of Science in Applied Artificial Intelligence, Belhaven University

AAI 503

Dr. Danielle Babb

September 19, 2026

The title of Chapter 7 of Work Disrupted: Opportunity, Resilience, and Growth in the Accelerated Future of Work by Jeff Schwartz is “Leaders as Coaches and Designers: Moving Beyond Managing Workflows and Controlling Direct Reports to Creating, Influencing, and Building.” Schwartz’s focus in this chapter is not on human capabilities like adaptability, creativity, empathy, or lifelong learning, but on creating a new model of leadership for the future. He mentions AI precisely three times, once on page 96, then pages 104 and 108. Schwartz does not mention automation. He does, however, dwell on how accelerated change is influencing the demand for changing models of leadership. This assignment is misaligned with the actual text of Chapter 7. I will do my best to follow the rubric, but leadership within our program should be aware of the mismatch.

I am choosing to write this in the assignment instead of “sending an email” to someone, the professor, dean, or course creator, because it is topical. I believe this course was created about a year ago. I don’t know how many students have gone through it. Has no one mentioned the fact that there is a discrepancy? That in itself is data worth writing about. For this analysis, I treat the university as a future-of-work organization undergoing AI-driven change, with faculty and students as its workforce. Human capabilities are currently at risk by the rise of AI and automation.

The human capability I will strive diligently to maintain is empathy, applying critical thinking as its method. Although there is no shortage of time (we all have the same amount of minutes in each day), the way we choose to spend them is based on priorities, allocating a value to each particular minute. My economist mind wondered at the value received by the faculty being weighted against the amount of work required. Is the balance fair? Everyone has multiple roles and responsibilities as well as challenges and constraints—this is by design as we go on life’s journey. (King James Bible, 1769/2017, Ephesians 2:10) I am in no position to do anything but allow empathy to work in me, a form of loving one another. We are all under strain from this accelerated change, doing our best to effectively use the technology even as we are learning as we go. One concept in chapter 7 had significant impact for me: “Revitalization versus Normalization. How to breathe new life into an organization without employees becoming ‘change weary.’ Thus, we find ourselves in the conflicted situation of needing revitalization but desiring normalization” (Schwartz, 2021, p. 107). Schwartz wrote this book during the pandemic; I remember people wanting things to return to normal—then we got the “new normal.” Our new normal now is to expect change—which is a form of instability. For people seeking balance, having the cross as a focal point is reassuring that change is literally temporal and temporary: God is eternal. I empathize with students and faculty as we seek to find the path forward as AI becomes part of our daily life and work.

I am currently conducting an experiment within this course on the use of AI whose findings I will report at the end of the term. The objective of this experiment is to assist students and faculty in maintaining human capabilities. Schwartz does mention empathy in the section entitled “Leading as Designers.” Quoting an article called “Why Design Thinking” by Himsworth, Schwartz lists five steps to use design thinking: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test (as cited in Schwartz, 2021, p. 102). Before reading the chapter, I applied design thinking to my machine tax experiment. Empathy is essential for current and future workers, both faculty and students in institutions of higher learning. Matthew 7:1 “Judge not, that ye be not judged”—we are all trying to navigate the constant changes to the best of our abilities while balancing value and effort. Maintaining critical thinking by questioning instead of blind acceptance takes courage due to its inherent risk. Going along with the crowd or asking AI to write a paper is easy. Scripture again is our teacher: “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction…narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life…” Matthew 7:13-14. My own goal in expressing empathy is to audit how artificial intelligence is impacting education, my own included, as AI becomes part of the machinery. Organizations and individuals have joint and several responsibility to develop and maintain human capabilities at this important crossroads. If “being human” is penalized and relying on AI is rewarded, what lessons are we teaching the next generation? Technical skills have never been sufficient in the workplace compared to maintaining empathy and critical thinking, and relying on Proverbs 22:29, I claim boldly they never will be.

Chapter 7 is a very interesting chapter in Work Disrupted focusing on leadership and the changes that are required from the traditional model to better direct the future of work. Schwartz recommends using techniques and areas of study outside of the traditional MBA subjects. Coaching, psychology and behavioral economics, cultural anthropology, and design are concepts to implement in management to give a more thoughtful and holistic approach to working with today’s teams. These humanities or social sciences as they are called by definition focus on maintaining human capabilities as technology continues to be incorporated at an accelerated rate. The chapter also details the two digital waves we have experienced this century. He cites the invention of the iPhone in 2007, stating that “every industry and occupation has been rewired around the first digital revolution. And while we were rewiring, which we are still doing, the second digital wave hit…driven by robotics, cognitive technology…and artificial intelligence (AI)” (Schwartz, 2021, p. 104). The next sections of the chapter are about teams, paradoxes, and the language of the future. I read this chapter closely as I found the insights compelling. In the last section, Schwartz writes “Management, including views of careers and organizations, need [sic] to build on resilience emphasizing adaptability, creativity, relationships, meaning, and growth” (Schwartz, 2021, p. 108). Schwartz does talk about adaptability, creativity, empathy, and lifelong learning more in depth in other chapters, but trying to map those concepts onto the actual text of chapter 7 is a stretch I can’t quite reach.

References

King James Bible. (2017). King James Bible Online. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/ (Original work published 1769)

Schwartz, J. (with Riss, S.). (2021). Work disrupted: Opportunity, resilience, and growth in the accelerated future of work. Wiley.

Claude was used for editorial and formatting work. All words are the author’s.