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How Should Team Leaders in MENA Respond to AI

The rise and adoption of AI systems and LLMs (large-language-models) has up-ended the social and economic fabric of society. In the workplace throughout the MENA region, company leaders are realizing that the technology is unobtrusively changing the way work is accomplished in their teams and amongst themselves. Despite the flashy headlines of a robot takeover, the biggest challenge businesses face is how they are forcing workers to evolve their day-to-day workflow to avoid redundancy and be more productive.

From Riyadh where government ministries are adding in machine learning-driven citizen services, all the way to Dubai’s banks employing advanced technologies to assess risk, the transformation of AI is happening more quickly than most managers and leaders expected. The question is not if it will transform work environments, because it undoubtedly will, but how quickly workplaces, teams, and internal processes can adjust and acquire the skills to work alongside it, not become its enemy.
The New Workplace Reality Integrating AI Into Team Management
AI adoption is bringing about two kinds of workplaces atmosphere throughout the region, each of which needs special adaptation methods. Let’s breakdown each one:

1. “AI-augmented environments,” or in other words, how this technology is being used to support existing processes and internal workflows, are where most of MENA’s workplaces stand today. Employees use ChatGPT for text assistance, automatic data analysis for reporting, and smart scheduling for project coordination. Built-in tools in Office 365 and Google Workplace to AI-driven optimization for ad campaigns and company dashboards are also being adopted to better support internal processes.

Success here involves being comfortable with these tools and understanding when and how to use them. Customer service teams utilize tools for Arabic-English translation in real-time and digital transformation, HR units use it tools for screening candidates, and finance units use machine learning for budget projections.

1. AI-native organizations, or ANOs, are also starting to emerge, especially in tech hubs such as Dubai and the NEOM project in Saudi Arabia. These organizations are structured from scratch for machine-human collaboration, with job functions five years ago that did not exist then and decision-making processes that combine human instinct and machine intelligence.