AIQ - AI Skills Assessment
CFTE PERFORMANCE HEXAGON
AI is Now a Top Priority But Also a Top Confusion
AI is no longer a distant future, it’s a top priority for boards, regulators, and leadership teams across industries. But while the urgency is clear, the path forward isn’t.
What does it mean to be “AI-ready”? Who in our organisations will thrive, and who will be left behind?
This hexagon addresses that uncertainty. It introduces a pragmatic lens to understand how AI transforms talent, performance, and leadership itself. Through original frameworks like the CDE Innovation Prism and the Performance Hexagon, it offers a way to make sense of rapid change, and act on it.
Now is the time to rethink how we define high performance. The organisations that succeed won’t just adopt AI – they’ll scale thinking, build capabilities, and shape workforces that are not only efficient, but adaptive, strategic, and human at their core.
of executives rank AI as Top 3 Strategic Priorities (Source: BCG, 2024)
of employees think that AI will impact their jobs (Source: ADP People at Work, 2024)
A global survey with HRs indicated AI as the top L&D priority for 2025 - double that of the next priority (Source: L&D Global Sentiment Survey, 2025)
A framework to predict innovation impact
The CDE innovation prism presents us that for any kind of technology, including AI, you will have three patterns of technology impact – Cheaper better faster, Different, and Enhancing
Cheaper, Better, Faster: Innovations that improve existing products, services, or processes to be more efficient, cost-effective, or higher quality, providing a competitive advantage in the market.
Different: Innovations that create entirely new products, services, or markets that didn’t exist before, introducing novel value propositions.
Enhancing: Innovations that augment existing products, services, or businesses to add new value or capabilities, enhancing their appeal and utility without direct competition.
The technology will compete by doing something totally different. Examples include Facebook which created something that did not really exist previously
The technology will compete with existing incumbents by being cheaper, better, faster. Examples include Amazon who went to the space and competed with bookshops, cheaper, better, faster.
Enhancing is not about competing, it’s not different. It’s about supporting an existing ecosystem. Examples include SalesForce which aimed not to compete but rather support existing ecosystems
How AI will reshape the workforce
If we applied to AI and the impact of AI on jobs, we can say with high confidence that all three patterns will happen at the same time.
Creative Disruptors: People who really do something totally different with the technology and make a big impact with for all of us. Eg. Demis Hassabis with AlphaFold who managed to predicted the structure of 200 million proteins in 4 years, something which would have taken 1 billion years of PHD work
Mass Displacement: AI will compete with the human workforce and lead to mass displacement, because AI is starting to be better than the average of us.
Supercharged Professionals: The supercharged professionals are the people who will be leveraging that domain experience with technology to do much more, much more.
C
Cheaper, Better, Faster
D
Different
E
Enhancing
What makes a high performing individual
in an AI world?
We know that it is not just the job function: In cases like Klarna where it replaced its customer service agents, for the same role, 70% of them were replaced, whereas 30% were supercharged by AI
It is not seniority or technical skills either: Young people were expected to do well as they can adapt to technology unlike the older generation
We are, however, been seeing some of the young generation struggling, not because they can’t use AI, but because they don’t have the domain experience.
AIQ Considers 5 Areas for focus & improvement
Superstar
Identifies problems and opportunities
(Builds the Business)
Systems Thinker
Creates leverage and efficiency
(Scales the Business)
Problem Solver
Find ways to solve issues independently
(Gets Things Done)
Task Robot
Executes Tasks Reliably
(Good Executor)
Underperformer
Requires constant Supervision
(High Maintenance)
“How can we build capabilities at scale, not just for a few people, but everyone?”
Find out more and become Supercharged Today
AI-Fication of Jobs
Authored by Huy Nguyen Trieu, Co-founder of CFTE and former Associate Fellow at Oxford Said Business School, The AI-fication of Jobs explores the accelerated impact AI is having on the workforce, revealing that the actions we take today will shape the future for hundreds of millions.
More on CFTE
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