The Cathedral's Missing Keystone
- Debbie Braden
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Companies are making a $650 billion bet on AI. The people positioned to make it pay off are being eliminated.
I’ve had a brain itch all week after reading an article by William Blair about the investment into humanoid robotic technology to “extend AI into the physical world and support the next major phase of productivity growth.” (1)
Companies are investing heavily - $650 billion annually in AI. (2) And humanoid investment is projected to grow from $3 billion to over $15 billion by 2030. (3)
The irony and why this has been rolling around in my head all week is that AI is also eliminating 16,000 jobs a month in the United States—and Gen Z is hit hardest.
There’s a parable of the three stonecutters made popular by Peter Drucker in his book The Practice of Management.
An old story tells of three stonecutters who were asked what they were doing. The first replied, “I’m making a living.” The second kept on hammering while he said, “I’m doing the best job of stonecutting in the entire country.” The third one looked up with a visionary gleam in his eyes and said, “I am building a cathedral."
Organizations want to stone cutter threes—the visionaries. The ones who see the whole.
Stone cutter threes are hard to find. I like to hire stone cutter ones because they are often just making a living because they haven’t been shown the cathedral yet. In my experience, once you show them vision, they become your most loyal stone cutter three.
Gen Zs are stone cutter ones and they are being fired before anyone shows them the cathedral. Continuing the stone analogy they are the keystone capable of holding two sides together.
They have been perceived to be entitled, lacking soft skills, and criticized for prioritizing their well-being and mental health over stability. But Gen Z isn’t the problem. They’re the missing variable. They’re digital natives who don’t separate the human from technology. They want AI to expand their capability. They have the capacity to thrive in AI-augmented environment, if companies learn how to lead them.
Deloitte’s 2026 survey of 22,500 Gen Z and millennial workers found that 76% want to pursue executive leadership roles—and three quarters are already using AI in their day-to-day work. They’re not checked out. They’re running ahead of the organizations that are cutting them. There’s a gap hiding in that number. While 68% of Gen Z says they’re capable of using AI tools, fewer than 60% express the same confidence in their senior leaders. The people companies are cutting are more AI-ready than the people making the cuts. (4)
A late 2025 survey by Gartner of business executives at large enterprises found no link between AI-driven layoffs and ROI from AI investments. The companies getting the most return were the ones training their people to use AI, not replacing them with it. (5)
Here’s what that costs when you miss it.
SHRM estimates replacing an employee runs between 50% and 200% of the employee’s annual salary. (6) That’s the visible number—recruiting, onboarding, the ramp-up period before someone reaches full productivity. For a portfolio company of 300 employees with 20% Gen Z and normal annual turnover, the replacement bill alone runs into the millions. And that’s the cost you can’t see.
The invisible cost is harder to name but easier to feel. It’s the empty pipeline when your current workforce ages out or burns out. It’s the institutional knowledge that walks out the door. And increasingly it’s the missing human nervous system on every AI implementation that needed someone to carry it to the front line—someone digitally native enough to push technology forward and trusted enough by the team to bring them along.
Gen Z is that person. Or they were before the exit package.
The companies making the biggest bets on automation are the same ones that have a gap between what leadership believes and what employees experience—what they say when no one’s asking, what they believe about whether leadership can be trusted, what’s driving the friction that keeps showing up as an execution problem.
That gap doesn’t close with another process improvement or technology implementation. It closes when you start listening differently.
The organizations that figure out how to show Gen Z the cathedral—and build the infrastructure to actually hear what’s happening underneath—will have a structural advantage their competitors won’t close quickly.
The ones that don’t will keep funding the automation and wondering why it isn’t compounding.
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