AI Won't Fix Your People Problems — Here's What I'm Seeing Inside Franchises and Frontline Teams

AI Won’t Fix Your People Problems - Here’s What I’m Seeing Inside Franchises and Frontline Teams Artificial Intelligence is changing how businesses operate. Emotional Intelligence is still what makes them succeed. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Key Takeaways As AI adoption accelerates, leaders are increasingly testing where technology fits-and where it may be overextended - in managing people and performance. The article explores the tension between efficiency gains and the human elements of leadership that technology can support but not replace. When the AI boom began, many leaders felt the rush. Tasks that once took hours suddenly took minutes. Hiring pipelines felt manageable again. Content became easier to produce. Naturally, leaders started asking, If AI can do all this, what else can we hand off? That question is where things began drifting into territory I know well: culture, leadership, communication, coaching and motivation - the very areas I’m hired to speak and write about. And it’s also where some leaders started getting themselves into trouble. I’m not an AI expert , nor do I pretend to be. But because I give presentations and lead trainings for franchise systems and frontline managers, I’m often pulled into conversations about tools promising to improve culture or performance. As AI hype grew, more tech companies approached me for endorsements of their platforms. Most position themselves as culture boosters or performance enhancers. I don’t take referral fees, so my opinions aren’t for sale - but I am curious. I’m always looking for tools that genuinely help the businesses I serve. What concerns me isn’t the technology itself - it’s how some companies are applying it to the most human parts of their business. Related: This Is the Invisible Force That’s Quietly Rewriting the Rules of Success The AI tools that promise too much One platform I was shown aggregates data across a franchise system and generates individualized recommendations for each owner and the field coaches who support them. If it detects high turnover and low customer satisfaction, it might suggest: “Improve company culture.” Sure. And telling a basketball player to “score more points” is also technically good advice. But without how , it’s just noise. I’ve also seen tools that attempt to gamify culture by awarding badges or prizes for compliments and internal communication. It’s an interesting idea - but culture isn’t something you win. It’s something you build. Culture is the shared beliefs, values, habits and behaviors that develop over time. It’s the social norms that define how people treat one another. A tool can support that dynamic, but it can’t create it or manage it. Culture is emotional. It’s psychological. It’s human. AI doesn’t feel those things, which means it can’t teach people how to create them. Where AI hiring misses what humans see instantly AI has reshaped hiring - sometimes for the better, sometimes not. My son recently applied for a job where the “interview” consisted of a prompt on a screen and a countdown clock. No conversation. No...

Preview: ~500 words