Most leaders are not behind on AI adoption. They are behind on knowing what to do with their people.
Author of SuperSkills (Kogan Page). Founded EtonX, acquired by Eton College. Led international growth at Quizlet across more than 60 countries.
Twenty years building education technology taught me how quickly tools change. What interested me more was what happened to the people using them.
I do not think AI is the biggest story of our time. I think what it does to human capability is.
Most organisations are handing judgement to AI without deciding to. Drift is what happens by default, one convenient shortcut at a time. Design is what you choose on purpose.
The deeper challenge is judgement allocation: deciding which humans decide what, and where.
New joiners prompt past the hard parts. Senior judgement stops being built. No one chose it. It accrued.
At the start, the middle and the end of the work. Then you build the skills that make the choice pay off.
Everyone says "keep a human in the loop." Nobody tells you which human, with which skills, at which point in the work. That is the work I do with leadership teams.
The seven SuperSkills cluster into three areas.
Staying curious, and staying ready to change, as the ground keeps moving.
Reading the whole system, and the people moving through it.
Turning judgement into responsible action, working with the machine.
The same drift shows up as capability debt, synthetic seniority and the missing rungs of early-career development. Read the research →
"A boat doesn't choose where it goes. The people in it do."From SuperSkills
The argument, at length
Described by its publisher as the most-requested title at the 2026 London Book Fair. Published by Kogan Page, part of Hachette UK. Rights sold in three territories, including Portuguese, and under review in 13 further languages.
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It shows which of two modes your organisation is running, then hands you the controls. Most drift. The ones that design build capability on purpose, and can prove it.
All three talks →My advisory work translates the SuperSkills frameworks into repeatable habits, from targeted leadership sessions to multi-month partnerships.
Closed-door working sessions on where drift is costing you, and which decisions to make first.
Team-level workshops that build the seven SuperSkills into how people plan, decide and ship.
Run the Drift vs Design Diagnostic across a function, read it with your leaders, turn it into a plan.
An ongoing partnership through every quarter of change. Limited slots.
"Rahim maps the exact capabilities we need to partner with machines without surrendering our authorship."Karim LakhaniHarvard Business School, co-author of Competing in the Age of AI
"I felt time stood still during your talk, the perfect moment for our event."Strategy LeadEcho360
On stage at
AWS · EdtechX · CIPD Festival of Work · London Tech Week · Korn Ferry · BehSci Meets AI · Imperial College · Dubai Arbitration Week · The Oystercatchers Club · and internationally in Turkey, Canada, Singapore and the UAE
Research base
Seven years of practitioner research behind the framework.
Where your organisation is drifting, and where it is designing. The Drift vs Design Diagnostic shows your team where they are, and where to act first.
Take the diagnostic →Share your audience, your challenge and your date. Every enquiry is read personally. Expect a reply within 24 hours.
Prefer to talk it through first? Book a 30-minute call
Now booking selected keynotes and advisory partnerships for 2026 and 2027. · rahim@thesuperskills.com
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