The seven human skills for the age of AI
Most organisations drift into AI. The best design it. The seven human capabilities that decide which one you are, and how to build them.
"A survival guide for human ingenuity."Karim Lakhani · Harvard Business School
“A survival guide for human ingenuity. Rahim maps the exact capabilities we need to partner with machines without surrendering our authorship.”
KARIM LAKHANI · Harvard Business School · co-author of Competing in the Age of AIIt does not begin with a reckless decision. It begins with a sequence of small ones never quite made, until the capability has moved and nobody remembers deciding to. Rahim Hirji calls it drift.
SuperSkills is the answer to it: a field guide to seven human capabilities that grow more valuable as the tools spread, built on seven years of research across more than 200 organisations and carried by a family story across four generations and three continents. Part warning and part route forward, it argues that what comes next is not the birth of something new but an evolution of the skills we have always used to adapt, now built on purpose rather than by accident.
SuperSkills (Kogan Page, 2026) sets out seven human capabilities, built on seven years of research across more than 200 organisations in over 30 countries.
“Every day, intelligent systems make thousands of small decisions on our behalf. Each one feels minor. Together, they represent a transfer of authorship over our own lives.”
“SuperSkills is about what happens next. Not to jobs. To judgement.”
RAHIM HIRJI · from the introductionFour minutes on why the book exists, told through three of its stories: a mother in Minneapolis, the women who changed how Sierra Leone buried its dead during Ebola, and a wooden boat out of Gujarat. No robots, no neon, no glowing brains.
Two minutes of choices, one after another, ending on the one the book is about. Choose design over drift.
A book to read together, not alone. The organisations that thrive do not just adopt AI. They build human capability on purpose, across the whole team. Each of those groups has a version of the talk built for it: boards and leadership offsites, HR and CHRO conferences, schools and education, and early careers and graduate talent.
Executives deciding where human judgement stays as AI reshapes the work, and how to prove it.
Chief people officers, chief HR officers and their teams, building capability that changes behaviour across the organisation, not slideware.
Individuals who want to grow more original and more useful as the tools spread, not more replaceable.
The human capabilities the machines make more valuable, not less.
Noticing what the machine misses, and asking the better question.
Turning disruption into advantage instead of drifting through it.
Reading where the work is heading while everyone else watches the tool.
Bringing human context to answers that arrive context-free.
Moving across cultures, markets and change without losing yourself.
Building fast, when speed is cheap, without surrendering your values.
Thinking differently with the machine, not just using it.
"A boat doesn't choose where it goes. The people in it do."
Along the way, the book hands leaders a shared language: the Drift versus Design matrix, the SuperSkills Ladder, and the risks that now have names, Synthetic Seniority, Capability Debt and the Missing Rungs.
Readers, unnamed on purpose: every review visible on Amazon in the United Kingdom and the United States at the end of September 2026 was five stars, and four of them named drift versus design as the idea that stayed with them. One arrived expecting a book about which jobs disappear and says it is not that. Two thought the seven-skill structure tidier than real life, which is the criticism the work has heard most often and the one worth knowing before you buy it.
Rich Wilson, author of The 40/40/20 Workforce, picked it up at London City Airport: “one of the best books I have read on AI for a while… super up-to-date examples and frameworks that are easy to implement.” All fourteen endorsements, the reviews and the criticisms are on the reviews page, and more of where the work is used and cited is on the citations page.
Every framework in the book has a research page behind it, with the evidence graded and the limits stated. Free, and no sign-up.
The argument. The SuperSkills thesis, and what a SuperSkill is, with the four tests a capability has to pass.
The seven, one page each. Curiosity, Change Readiness, Big Picture Thinking, Empathy, Global Adaptability, Principled Innovation and Augmented Mindset. Each carries the evidence, the practices and what can be observed.
Part two, the system. The Five Loops, the weekly rhythm with a closure signal for each. Hand, Head, Hours, Heart, the four receipts for human judgement, with a fourth added since the book went to print. And the five questions that keep you human.
A tech-era book that puts humanity over technology. Personal memoir meets professional framework, built on real lives, not hypotheticals.
"A powerful and practical 'operating system' for career survival in the AI era, and a timely and optimistic reminder that human judgment is the superpower that will save us."David Rowan · Founding Editor-in-Chief, WIRED UK
"At a time of profound change and uncertainty, I distrust anyone promising simple solutions. This is the antidote. A marvellously humane model for building capability amid the 21st century's tumult."Dr Tom ChatfieldAuthor of Wise Animals
"In proposing 'superskills' for the new era of AI, Hirji outlines what is essential to navigate the most intense technological disruption humanity has yet had to face."Professor Alnoor BhimaniFounding Director, LSE Entrepreneurship
"The business leaders who successfully scale their organisations invest in people, not just technology. This book shows you exactly how to do that in the age of AI."Sherry Coutu CBEEntrepreneur and Non-Executive Director
"A guide to the AI age grounded not in futurism or hype, but in wisdom and humanity. He asks not how technology will change us, but how we can change ourselves."Timo HannayFounder, Digital Science; former Publishing Director, Nature
"The compass we didn't know we needed. What makes us irreplaceable isn't processing power, it's seven deeply human abilities that must be actively practised."Josue EstradaCOO, Center for AI Safety; former COO, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
"The greatest risk of AI isn't that machines become more human, but that humans stop exercising judgement, taste and care. These are essential skills for everyone, especially leaders."Jonathan PeacheyFormer COO, Next 15 Group plc
"The AI Age is moving fast and will impact every industry and field. Rahim Hirji's seven superskills are the key ones to keep thriving in the world that is now opening up."Peter LeydenFuturist and former Managing Editor, WIRED
"One of the exceptionally rare books that I will reread. Rahim Hirji turns nonfiction into narrative and gives language to human skills I've observed and taken for granted."Rudy KarsanEntrepreneur, investor and former CEO, Kenexa
"Both a call to arms and a primer for a different way of thinking. A simple framework for building agency and embracing what it means to be human alongside the accelerated power AI brings."Natasha BillingSVP Commercial, Warner Music
"SuperSkills addresses a question every leader is now asking: will my work and I remain relevant as technology accelerates? It shows how to shape your circumstances rather than drift."Pablo BradburyCFO, DHL Express Americas
"Even in an age of rapid technological advancement, the human role remains irreplaceable. This book shows how we can embrace change without fear and shape the future rather than have it happen to us."David Gareth ThomasFormer Chief People Officer, HSBC APAC
"Whether AI is our ally depends upon how well we employ the SuperSkills offered in this book. Our humanity and our future are at stake. Read, heed, and relish this book, for your sake and the sake of the generations to come."Zoe WeilCo-Founder and President, Institute for Humane Education
Bringing this to your team or your stage? The argument in the book is the argument in the room. Three talks · Board advisory · Check a date · Quotes to share
“A reminder that success is not about what you know today, it is about your capacity to keep learning forever.”ARAB NEWS
Reviewed by Arab News and David Boyle, Saturday AI Thoughts.
Launch week in London, and where the book has turned up since: bookshop shelves, a new releases table, a world map, and some unexpected company.
Watch the London launch on Instagram →
Conference stages, panels and podiums through 2026. A room full of people who disagree with you is the fastest way to find out which parts of a book hold.
Twenty years building education technology, including founding EtonX and leading international growth at Quizlet across more than 60 countries. Seven years of research across more than 200 organisations became SuperSkills. He has written the Box of Amazing newsletter since 2017, now read by more than 25,000 leaders, and speaks to boards and leadership teams worldwide on human capability in the age of AI.
SuperSkills was used with the 2026 cohort of the Positive Leadership course at the UPEACE Centre for Executive Education, part of the University for Peace, established by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1980. The facilitator, Reshma Aziz Khan, drew on the book for the course’s material on AI and leadership and referred participants to it and to the research on this site. Her faculty listing. In September 2026 she closed a session at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz by reading its line on human judgement as the currency that holds value when everything else becomes automated, and told the room it was the whole morning in one sentence. She wrote afterwards: “If you are thinking about what happens to leadership in the age of AI, and what we need beyond our tech and soft skills, then you need to read this book.”
Stated at the level the evidence supports. This was a facilitator referring her cohort to the book and quoting it from a stage she was hosting, not a formal endorsement by either institution, and it is described that way deliberately.
The book asks whether organisations design their relationship with AI or drift into it. The Triple D, the Drift versus Design Diagnostic, asks the same question of you. Ninety-four questions in nine parts, a score out of a hundred, a band and one of nine archetypes. Free, about twelve minutes, and no account.
SuperSkills argues that AI is not coming for your job but for your judgement, and sets out the seven human capabilities that grow more valuable as machines advance: Curiosity, Change Readiness, Big Picture Thinking, Empathy, Global Adaptability, Principled Innovation and Augmented Mindset. It is part warning, part route forward, built on seven years of research and carried by a family story across four generations and three continents.
SuperSkills is a framework of seven human capabilities that grow more valuable as AI advances: Curiosity, Change Readiness, Big Picture Thinking, Empathy, Global Adaptability, Principled Innovation and Augmented Mindset. It is the subject of my book, SuperSkills: The Seven Human Skills for the Age of AI (Kogan Page, 2026), and is built on seven years of research across more than 200 organisations in over 30 countries.
Leaders deciding how their organisations adopt AI, chief people officers and HR teams building capability programmes, and any professional asking what stays theirs as the tools improve. It is written to be read in a weekend and argued about for longer.
Synthetic seniority is when a junior produces work that looks like it came from someone with ten years of judgement, except the judgement is the model's. The work product is senior; the person is not. The organisational risk is a pipeline that looks productive for three years and produces no senior people in fifteen.
Paperback and ebook, both published on 3 July 2026 by Kogan Page, and Kogan Page also sells the two together direct. The audiobook is not out yet: Hachette committed in July 2026 to producing it by the end of the first quarter of 2027, so Q1 2027 is the honest date and nothing firmer is claimed here. Four rights deals have been signed. Two are translations, Vietnamese with Alpha Books Company and Portuguese with Autentica Editora, neither with a published release date yet. Two are summary editions rather than translations, licensed to getAbstract and to Soundview Executive Book Summaries, and Soundview’s is in English. A further thirteen languages are recorded as under review, which comes from a London Book Fair note in March 2026 and is not a sales figure.
Yes. Bulk orders are available, and branded editions can be arranged for larger events. Use the contact page.
Curiosity, Change Readiness, Big Picture Thinking, Empathy, Global Adaptability, Principled Innovation and Augmented Mindset. Seven human capabilities that grow more valuable as AI advances, built on seven years of research across more than 200 organisations.
Yes. It is written to be read in a weekend and argued about for longer, and many readers work through it as a team, one skill at a time. Bulk orders are available for organisations.
Paperback and ebook, published 3 July 2026 by Kogan Page. Available now from bookshops worldwide, and listed here by region so you order from a shop that will actually ship to you.
Somewhere else? Find SuperSkills on Amazon. Ordering for a team or an event? Ask about bulk copies, and branded editions can be arranged for larger events.
If this was useful and you want a small amount of it each week, that is what the letter is for. Weekly essays on AI, capability and the future of work. Read by 25,000 people, every week since 2017. Free, and one click to stop.
Opens Substack to confirm. No pitch in it, unsubscribe in one click, and nobody follows up because you read something.
Running an event, or responsible for how AI arrives in your organisation? Keynotes · Advisory · Boards · Enquire
