I think the organizations that thrive will combine the power of AI with the strengths of their employees, their culture, and the relationships they have built with customers over time. Canadian Tire Corporation, an iconic pillar of Canadian retail and a custom executive education client, offers an instructive example.
AI adoption is cultural
For more than a century, the company has developed a deep understanding of Canadian customers and communities. Its long-term advantage is not simply the volume of data it possesses or the technology it can deploy. It is the trust, loyalty, judgment, and human knowledge behind those assets. Certainly, AI can help Canadian Tire use its data more effectively. But it cannot independently recreate the relationship the company has built with Canadians over generations.
Ilana Santone, Senior Vice President, Business and AI Transformation at Canadian Tire Corporation, describes AI adoption as “more of a cultural and leadership event than it is a technological event.” The custom executive education program that we have designed and delivered for the company’s senior leadership team addressed not only how the technology works but also how leaders should discuss it, respond to employee reactions, and help people navigate the change.
This is a particularly important responsibility for HR and L&D leaders. AI readiness cannot be reduced to access to a tool or completion of a technical training course. It requires a shared understanding of what the organization is trying to accomplish, how roles may evolve, and which human capabilities will become more valuable.
The Coin of Obligation
Canadian Tire has developed a useful way to frame the responsibilities created by this transition. They call it the “Coin of Obligation.” On one side, the organization has an obligation to provide employees with modern tools, relevant training, and meaningful opportunities to build AI capabilities. Employees should not be expected to navigate a fundamental shift in work without support. On the other side of the coin, employees have an obligation to engage. They must be prepared to learn, experiment, apply new tools, and adapt how they work. As Santone explains, the company wants to help its people become modern employees while asking them to commit to becoming such.
I find this concept very powerful because it recognizes a mutual commitment. The company must invest in preparedness. Employees must take responsibility for developing it. Leaders must model both sides.
For senior executives, that means learning enough about the technology themselves to be able to make informed choices rather than delegating the future of the organization entirely to technical teams. It also means creating the conditions where employees can learn without fear, ask better questions, and apply AI to real business problems.
Research on human-AI collaboration also reminds us that combining people and technology does not automatically produce a better result. An MIT Center for Collective Intelligence analysis found that human-AI teams did not consistently outperform the best human-only or AI-only approach across all tasks. The strongest results depended on the nature of the work, with particular promise in creative activities.
The leadership task, therefore, is not merely to put a human “in the loop.” It is to decide deliberately what AI should do, what people should do, and how each can contribute its particular strengths.
Protect meaningful legacy
AI can help an organization understand customers better through data, but empathy must still come from people. That is why AI strategy cannot be separated from culture. The goal is not to preserve every existing process. Many processes should change. The goal is to ensure that, while the organization becomes faster and more capable, it does not discard the trust, relationships, institutional knowledge, and sense of purpose that made it successful in the first place.
Canadian Tire’s opportunity lies in using AI to strengthen its legacy understanding of Canadians and serve them better, while protecting the human relationship at the center of that understanding. Its scale of customer and loyalty data may create powerful new possibilities, but the company’s advantage comes from connecting that data to a century-long relationship with Canadian communities.
The future is not humans versus AI. It is humans using AI to solve larger problems, make better decisions, and serve other humans more effectively. The technology may be unprecedented, but the fundamental leadership responsibility remains familiar: equip people, earn their trust, and create a culture in which they can succeed.
Learn more about Canadian Tire Corporation’s custom executive education program.