The Project We Didn’t Plan For: Desire, Despair, and the Hidden Work of Managing AI-Driven Change
AI-driven change often begins with a familiar assignment: implement a tool, establish a policy or new workflow, train a workforce, and manage the transition. But beneath the deliverables lies another project, one rarely accounted for in the scope, budget, or timeline: a fundamental shift in people's relationship with their work.
AI can inspire desire for possibility, relief, and innovation while also awakening fear and uncertainty about professional identity, security, autonomy, competence, and meaning. Ambivalence is not unusual: people can welcome a change and fear its consequences at the same time. These tensions influence trust, psychological safety, and whether employees feel able to question, experiment, and voice legitimate concerns.
Project managers increasingly find themselves holding desire and despair in their hands, expected to deliver an AI initiative while navigating profound changes in human behavior at work, often without the authority, formal training, or resources that the work requires.
Drawing on clinical social work, behavioral science, motivational interviewing, the Stages of Change model, Prosci's ADKAR framework, and project management principles, this interactive webinar introduces interventions and skills that complement traditional stakeholder engagement and project delivery.
During this session, through anonymized case discussions, live Mentimeter polling, and participants' own implementation challenges, attendees will explore how to:
- Recognize the psychological, behavioral, and organizational tensions underlying AI implementation, including the deeper human desires that influence people’s responses to change.
- Move beyond conventional approaches to stakeholder engagement by applying psychological safety, behavior change principles, and practical change management methods, such as motivational interviewing.
- Identify gaps in change readiness, organizational capacity, and implementation planning, and make the case for the authority, resources, and support needed to address them.
- Navigate expanding project management responsibilities while maintaining trust, accountability, and meaningful participation in change.
Participants will leave with:
- Practical tools
- Take-home guide
- Resources for further learning.
The webinar is relevant whether an organization is exploring AI or already implementing it.
Speakers
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Postponement / Cancellation
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This event may be canceled or postponed by the Chapter, though all efforts will be made to avoid doing so. If canceled or postponed, notification will be made to all registrants via email.
