How it actually happens
Most organizations are measuring AI adoption while the work itself is quietly reorganizing underneath them. That gap, between what leaders are tracking and what is actually happening on their teams, is where I do my work.
ABOUT
I'm Ken Roden. Based in Boston. I help leaders understand how work is actually changing inside their organization, not just how strategy decks describe it.
I'm finishing a doctorate at Temple University's Fox School of Business. The research is grounded in eleven interviews with senior leaders running real P&Ls. Every leader I talk to says leadership has not changed. Then they spend forty-five minutes describing a job that clearly has.
That gap is the territory.
SPEAKING
I speak to director, VP, and C Level audiences inside companies trying to make AI work without breaking the people who used to own the work. Most rooms are mid-market or enterprise.
Current topics:
-Same leader. Different demands. Different room. Why leadership principles have not changed and the job still feels unrecognizable. From the doctoral research.
-The adoption trap. Most AI rollouts hit usage numbers and never change how work actually happens. The problem is almost never the tool. It is the coordination model around the tool.
-Orchestrated leadership. The work senior leaders are doing that nobody named, nobody trained them for, and the org chart does not see.
-What the leaders I interviewed will not say out loud. Patterns from the research that get cut from every keynote.
WRITING
Between Strategy and Reality on Substack. Short pieces from inside the work. Roughly weekly.
PODCASTS
What We Don't Say. Senior leaders, accomplished and not famous, sharing the honest version of their career and leadership stories. The personal chaos behind the professional wins. No prep. No talking points.
FutureCraft GTM. Co-hosted with Erin Mills. AI and go-to-market for B2B practitioners.
Leadership Advisory
I work with a small number of leadership teams on AI rollouts and organizational change. Most engagements come through referral.
The work usually starts where most rollouts break. Managers inherit workflows nobody redesigned. Metrics nobody updated. Coordination questions nobody owns. The technology works before the organization does.
If the workflow is not going to change, I am probably not the right person.
For speaking, advisory, podcast guesting, or pitching one of the shows