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Jul 3, 2026
Richard Lowe (Hewlett Rand): "The biggest shift is not what we learn, but how we learn"
Richard Lowe (Hewlett Rand): "The biggest shift is not what we learn, but how we learn"
00:00
03:31
Transcript
0:00
Welcome to AI Central Voices, the series where we sit down with the people actually shaping how AI gets used at work.
0:08
In this episode, we spoke with Richard Lowe, founder and managing director of Hewlett Rand, a leadership and team performance consultancy.
0:16
He also founded TechWest England Advocates and serves as a scaleup ambassador for the Institute of Directors.
0:23
Richard has spent three decades in leadership development, from corporate learning and development to building his own practice, so he has a clear-eyed view of what the AI moment actually changes and what it doesn’t.
0:35
He started by comparing this moment to one he lived through before. Looking back, AI feels comparable to the arrival of the internet in terms of its transformative potential, Lowe said.
0:46
The difference, he notes, is speed. The pace of adoption and impact is far faster this time,
0:53
but the fundamentals haven’t moved: leadership, management, communication, as critical today as they were in the early nineties. As Lowe puts it, the biggest shift is not what we learn, but how we learn.
1:06
His sharpest point is about where AI adoption should begin. Most leaders, he argues, get the sequence backwards, pushing AI onto their workforce before building their own understanding of it.
1:18
AI transformation must begin in the boardroom, Lowe said. Directors need a real grasp of the opportunities, the risks, and the governance before they can make good strategic calls.
1:29
And his conclusion is the line worth remembering: successful AI adoption is ultimately a leadership challenge, not simply a technology project. So what does the change actually look like on the ground?
1:43
Richard gave us a concrete example. As a non-executive director of Maxres, an AI-powered learning platform, he’s watched AI compress training design that used to take weeks or months.
1:55
AI is dramatically reducing development times while improving consistency, personalization, and scalability, he said.
2:02
The platform started in defense and is now moving into commercial markets, helping organizations upskill their people fast as the technology shifts underneath them. And his own workflow? Nothing exotic.
2:15
ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot every week for research, planning, and content. The point, he’s clear, isn’t automation for its own sake.
2:24
It’s freeing up time for the high-value work: strategic thinking, client relationships, the human side. Which brings us to his prediction, the one he’d put money on for the next eighteen months.
2:36
Yes, AI-powered learning coaches will become embedded in everyday work, but Richard thinks the real surprise runs the other way.
2:45
As AI increasingly automates routine tasks, organizations will invest more heavily in leadership, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and cultural alignment, he said.
2:56
His bet is a resurgence in team-based human skills because the edge increasingly comes from how people work together, not just the tools they use.
3:06
A fitting episode, and good timing too, with Hewlett Rand marking its twentieth anniversary from the first of July, twenty twenty-six.
3:14
You can find Richard Lowe on LinkedIn and follow Hewlett Rand and TechWest England Advocates for more on leadership, growth, and innovation. That’s it for this episode of AI Central Voices.
3:25
If you found this useful, the full written interview is in your inbox and on our site. We’ll see you in the next one.
AI Central Voices: The AI Leadership Podcast
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