If you’re leading learning and development right now, chances are your calendar is full of AI demos, pilot conversations, and workshops about “prompting.” Your inbox is probably full of AI summaries, AI-generated recaps, AI-powered templates… and whatever your IT team is rolling out this month.
From the outside, it looks like progress.
But many learning leaders are starting to quietly ask, “Why isn’t anything actually changing?”
That’s where Dr. Markus Bernhardt’s metaphor hits home. Recently I had the privilege of interviewing him for the Learning Leader Spotlight podcast. In our interview, he describes two kinds of AI work happening inside organizations right now: the surface wave and the undercurrent. And understanding the difference helps explain why some organizations are running in circles while others are fundamentally reshaping how work gets done.
Let’s break it down.
The Surface Wave: Busy, Visible, and… Not Actually Transformative
The surface wave is everything you can see:
- Pilots everywhere (“Here’s a new tool to test this month!”)
- Lots of dashboards and productivity stats
- Prompt training and AI literacy sessions
- A growing list of tools employees might use someday
- Individual wins like “My email writing is faster” or “I summarized a PDF in two minutes!”
All of this is useful. Every organization needs these first steps to get people comfortable with using AI. It boosts confidence. It boosts awareness. And it creates a shared vocabulary.
The problem? It rarely changes how we behave in business.
Why?
Because the surface wave focuses on making individuals faster but leaves the system completely untouched. People still follow the same workflows, ask for the same approvals, move through the same handoffs, and deal with the same bottlenecks. AI just lets them push the boulder up the hill a little faster.
A team can proudly say: “We trained 1,200 people and completed four pilots!” …but none of that shifts cost structures or improves cycle times. None of it changes how decisions get made. None of it removes steps or redesigns roles. That’s why the surface wave feels productive but often doesn’t add up to meaningful impact.
Rewiring Workflows
The Undercurrent: Where Real Transformation Actually Happens
The undercurrent is the part that doesn’t show up in dashboards, newsletters, or tool rollouts. It’s quiet, slow, and honestly… a little uncomfortable. Because this is the work that forces leaders to rethink how the organization operates, not just how fast people complete tasks.
Here’s what undercurrent work looks like:
1. Redesigning workflows
Instead of “speeding up what we already do,” teams ask: “Should we even still do this step? Could part of this be automated?”
2. Shifting decision rights
Example: a sales manager can approve a discount on the spot because AI verified all the conditions, no VP escalation required. That’s a real power shift, and it changes how the business moves.
3. Mapping and cleaning data
To automate anything, teams need to know:
- What data is required?
- Where does it live?
- Who owns it?
- Is it accurate?
Not glamorous work, but absolutely critical.
4. Building new roles, not eliminating them
Instead of firing people who used to click “next” on a claims form, organizations need those same people to monitor exceptions, fix broken logic, update workflows, and evaluate edge cases.
That’s the shift. People don’t disappear; they move up the value chain.
So why do organizations avoid the undercurrent? Simple: it’s human, not technical. It involves politics, power, governance, process redesign, and cross-functional alignment. It requires leaders to ask, “What are we willing to change?” Not just, “What tool should we try next?”
And deep down, everyone knows: this is the real work. You can download a copy of Dr. Bernhardt’s report.
How L&D Leaders Can Move Beyond Pilot Theater
The good news? You don’t need massive budgets or a full-time AI transformation office to start doing undercurrent work. L&D has a unique advantage here. We understand workflows, performance, and the human side of change. Here’s where to begin:
1. Build AI literacy, then move quickly to fluency
Employees need enough familiarity to stop treating AI like magic and start seeing real possibilities.
- Literacy = “I can use the tool.”
- Fluency = “I can spot where the tool could change the workflow.”
Learning and development leaders can accelerate both.
AI Literacy to Fluency
2. Run bottleneck analyses, not more pilots
Pick one process that eats time, money, or people. Ask: “If we could remove one step or shift one decision right, what would make the biggest impact?” Don’t start with tools. Start with friction.
3. Choose a low-risk, high-volume workflow as your first real pilot
Examples of low risk workflows for L&D include content localization, course update cycles, or compliance training reminders. These are repetitive, rules-based, and perfect for small wins. As Markus shared, global teams have seen localization costs drop by up to 12x using the right AI-enabled tools. That frees budget and time instantly.
4. Involve both innovators and skeptics
Innovators help you see possibilities. Skeptics save you from risk. You need both in the room if you want transformation instead of chaos.
A Simple Checklist: Are You Still in the Surface Wave?
Here’s a quick way to tell whether your AI work is shifting the business or just showing activity. Answer yes or no to each:
- Did any workflow actually change?
- Did any decision rights shift to a different person or level?
- Did the cost structure change?
- Did we improve cycle times in a measurable way?
- Did the data flow change (where it lives, who owns it, how it’s cleaned)?
- Did we free up time for more strategic L&D work?
- Did we stop doing something entirely because AI handles it?
If you answered “no” to most of these, you’re still in the surface wave no matter how many pilots or workshops you’ve run.
Final Thoughts: The Future Belongs to Teams Doing Undercurrent Work
AI literacy and pilot activity are important, but they’re not the finish line. They’re the warm-up. Real transformation happens in the undercurrent: the place where workflows change, decisions shift, roles evolve, and organizations finally move from “busy” to “better.”
Learning and development has a huge opportunity right now. Not just to train people on Artificial Intelligence, but to help redesign how work gets done.
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