Change expert, speaker & author
Course profile
With Naven, Kai Anderson is building a new management instrument for the Intelligence Age — an AI advisor that reveals what blocks execution in organizations.
Before that: 30 years in consulting. Founding partner of Promerit, the consultancy specialized in HR and transformation that is now part of Mercer. He continues to work for Mercer as a Senior Advisor and keynote speaker.
Thinkers50 Radar 2024. Named several times among Personalmagazin’s “40 leading minds in HR,” most recently in 2025. Author of several books.
„UNSERE WELT IST HEUTE KOMPLEXER UND UNSICHERER DENN JE - KONTROLLE IST EINE ILLUSION. NACHHALTIGE VERÄNDERUNGEN FÜR JEDEN VON UNS, FÜR UNTERNEHMEN, FÜR UNSERE GESELLSCHAFT WERDEN WIR NUR ERREICHEN, WENN WIR DEN MENSCHEN IN DEN MITTELPUNKT STELLEN. WENN WIR VERTRAUEN SCHENKEN UND DEN RICHTIGEN RAHMEN SCHAFFEN FÜR DIE ENTWICKLUNG DES INDIVIDUUMS UND DES SYSTEMS, DAS IHN UMGIBT.“
- KAI ANDERSON
Naven
Most applications of AI today are built for automation. Automation means shrinking. We asked a different question: what can we do more of with AI? What wasn’t possible before?
Naven is the answer: an AI advisor that makes organizations capable of execution. It analyzes real decisions, makes the diagnosis, and shows where to act.
You can automate work. You cannot automate growth. That takes a new instrument.
AI
Efficiency is the default. Automate, cut costs, protect margins — rational in the short term, a trap in the aggregate. Those who treat AI as an instrument for growth rather than a lever for costs are buying the future. Everyone else is buying time.
People
In the New Work era, the question was: how do we want to work? Today it is: what will we work on? AI doesn’t change the forms of work, but its content. Those who redefine work without involving the people who do it will lose their trust.
Leadership
Leadership in the Intelligence Age means making the right decisions — and executing them. Upskilling is not an HR initiative but capital allocation. And the next generation of management systems will not be built around cutting costs, but around execution.
Perspectives
Strategy · AI & Work
Sam Altman got the diagnosis right: AI shifts value from labor to capital. But the decision isn’t made in politics — it’s made inside companies. Why efficiency is the real growth trap — and the three decisions leadership has to make now.
People · The Future of Work
To automate is to shrink. To augment is to design. AI puts companies to that choice — and not choosing means shrinking. Three moves that make the shift work.
Leadership · Intelligence Age
The principles of good leadership don’t change — not even with AI. The priorities do, and leadership matters more than before. Because one thing is not up for choice: handing decisions to algorithms that no one can follow anymore.
Publications
Work Different: 10 Truths for Winning in the People Age (with Kate Bravery and Ilya Bonic, 2023)
Ten truths for the People Age — and the bridge to the question that has defined everything since: what is AI making of work? read more
Digital Human: Der Mensch im Mittelpunkt der Digitalisierung (with Bettina Volkens, 2018)
The thesis that holds: every person wants to be seen. Written before the AI turning point — all the more valid after it. read more
Das agile Unternehmen (Ed., 2016)
Contributions on the agile organization, brought into line and annotated. The start of a line of thought that now ends at execution: agility is nothing without follow-through. read more