For generations, the workplace has had an apprenticeship system hidden in plain sight.
People began with relatively straightforward work. They watched experienced colleagues. They practised. They made small decisions. They got things wrong. They learned how the organisation really worked. Gradually, they were trusted with greater responsibility.
Much of that learning was never formally written into a development program. It happened through the work itself.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE BOTTOM OF THE LADDER CHANGES?
AI is disrupting that process.
PwC’s 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer found that entry-level roles most exposed to AI are now seven times more likely to require capabilities traditionally associated with senior employees, including leadership, creativity and judgement.
PwC describes this as the “seniorisation” of entry-level work. This was the topic of my last newsletter. Its analysis of 2.4 million US entry-level jobs found that these seniorised roles have grown 35 per cent since 2019, while other entry-level roles declined by 10 per cent.
In effect, we are removing some of the work through which people traditionally learned, while expecting sophisticated capability earlier.
WHAT DISAPPEARS WITH THE ROUTINE WORK?
It is tempting to think that eliminating repetitive junior work is entirely positive.
Some of it certainly should disappear. But routine work also provided repeated opportunities to practise and learn through experience. It helped people develop the ability to prioritise, recover from mistakes, deal with stakeholders and understand how work really gets done.
The World Economic Forum recently warned that when AI absorbs repetitive work, organisations can gain efficiency while losing “the developmental pathway that produces competent managers and grounded leaders.”
That is the real talent challenge emerging from the AI productivity story. If the old apprenticeship is disappearing, what replaces it?
A DIFFERENT KIND OF APPRENTICESHIP
The answer is not simply more training.
People learn judgement by exercising judgement.
They learn influence by trying to bring others with them.
They learn adaptability when the first approach fails.
They learn initiative when they encounter a problem that nobody has explicitly asked them to solve and decide to do something about it.
They learn leadership when responsibility becomes real.
Intrapreneurial capability develops through repeated cycles of action, experience, reflection and learning. When people work on meaningful organisational challenges, test ideas, engage stakeholders and see the consequences of their decisions, confidence and agency can grow over time.
AI can be part of that process. It can scaffold inquiry, analysis and experimentation without removing the cognitive effort people need to develop.
THE WORK BECOMES THE CLASSROOM
This suggests a different model of workplace development.
Give people real problems worth solving.
Let them investigate them.
Let them speak with stakeholders.
Let them experiment.
Let them meet resistance.
Give them feedback and space to reflect.
Then progressively increase the complexity and responsibility.
Development happens while useful work is being done and value is being created.
This is the kind of workplace apprenticeship I believe organisations now need to build deliberately in the age of AI. As AI makes information retrieval, analysis and some forms of problem-solving easier, the developmental emphasis shifts towards identifying which problems are worth solving, interpreting context, exercising judgement, mobilising others and creating value through purposeful action.
These are also the capabilities at the heart of intrapreneurial agency, intentionally taking purposeful action to turn possibility into progress within an organisation.
BUILD PEOPLE AS FAST AS WE BUILD TECHNOLOGY
That is the bigger challenge for organisations now.
We are becoming very good at accelerating technology. We also need to become much more intentional about accelerating human development.
The organisations that benefit most from AI will not simply automate faster. They will build people faster.
And that requires new pathways for learning through meaningful work.
At the Global Intrapreneurs Institute, this philosophy sits at the heart of our Professional Certificate of Intrapreneurialism (PCI). Participants develop their capability through real organisational challenges, stakeholder engagement, experimentation, reflection and intrapreneurial projects designed to create tangible value.
For organisations thinking about how to develop emerging leaders, high-potential employees or people whose roles are being reshaped by AI, the PCI offers a practical way to build these capabilities through meaningful work. Participants address real organisational problems and opportunities while developing the confidence, capability and agency to create value from within.
If this is a capability your organisation is looking to strengthen, explore the Professional Certificate of Intrapreneurialism.
Talk soon.