Vineet Nayar, who grew HCL Technologies to $50 billion in market capitalization as CEO between 2007 and 2013, has a blunt message for HR leaders: AI gives them "the mother of all opportunities" — but only if they redesign work around employees rather than using the technology for surveillance and control.

Nayar, now Founder-Chairman of the Sampark Foundation, tells UNLEASH that HR leaders "are the only people who can create an empowered organization" — one that places AI directly in the hands of workers instead of concentrating it at the top of the hierarchy. For people-process leaders, that argument reframes workforce redesign, manager development and appraisal systems as boardroom-level strategic decisions rather than administrative functions.

Why the top-down model is failing

Nayar's premise starts with history. The manufacturing giants of the 1960s and 1970s lost their dominance, he says, because they treated new technology as a productivity tool. Companies such as Apple, Amazon and Tesla thrived because they used technology to reinvent their business models and invert the organization pyramid.

AI raises the stakes. Knowledge has been democratized, so its value has dropped, while experience that once took decades to build is now embedded into technology in minutes. In that environment, the traditional model — in which CEOs and senior leaders hold the most knowledge and experience — no longer holds.

Organizations must "create alternate differentiators," Nayar says. In the future of work, that differentiator is people enabled and empowered by AI. This is where HR comes in: only the function can build what he calls the "alternate organization" — an empowered one, with AI under the employee.

The CHRO-to-CEO pipeline

Nayar traces how the CEO background has shifted with each era: sales leaders dominated in growth periods, finance leaders rose during recessions and depressions, and technologists took charge during digital transformation. Next in line, he predicts, are HR-trained CEOs who understand the people and cultural transformation the AI era demands.

The claim comes with evidence from his own tenure. At HCL, management was made accountable to employees through open and transparent appraisals. Nayar's own appraisal was conducted by "100,000 employees in 32 countries, and the results were published for all to see." He draws a straight line from that hierarchy inversion to HCL's growth to $50 billion in market capitalization, with the operating principle of creating a direct interface between employees and customers rather than escalating decisions up the ladder.

At the time, he notes, the effort required cultural transformation because AI did not exist. "That [result] has already been proven by us, and then many other organizations, which implemented the 'employee first' model. Now, with AI coming in, that becomes much easier because now the employee has the tool," he says.

Four capabilities to invest in now

The manager's role has "changed dramatically," according to Nayar — moving from supervision to teaching employees "how to be curious, how to frame the problem correctly, how to be decisive, and how to rematch."

His answer to the question of what to invest in when every organization has the same AI tools: four human capabilities. First, framing the right hypothesis or question. Second, interpreting signals uniquely. Third, the ability to decide. Fourth, the ability to reimagine.

For HR leaders planning learning and development budgets, that list doubles as a framework for prioritizing skills that AI cannot simply replicate.

The productivity trap

Nayar warns of one specific failure mode: using AI as a surveillance and control tool instead of trusting employees to innovate autonomously. That, he says, repeats the "industrial age" thinking that brought down the manufacturing giants.

"If that happens, then this opportunity is lost for you. You have to reimagine and you have to sell that dream to the Board, not do what the manufacturing companies did and lose out on opportunity," he says.

The window is open now, and Nayar frames the choice in the sharpest possible terms for HR leaders with CEO ambitions: "If you follow, you are dead. If you take the lead, then you are the future CEO."