Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan 8 Lessons From Uber's CTO on How to Move from "AI Enforcement" to "AI Normalization"
Feb 11, 2026
Praveen Neppalli Naga, Uber CTO and AI/platform leader, shares strategic takes on normalizing AI instead of enforcing it. He explores identity disruption as a source of resistance. He reframes success around organizational velocity, task-level job redesign, governance for legitimacy, HR and tech co-leadership, tool choices, and the systemic risk of rogue agents.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Early Adopters Beat Brute Force
- Praveen Neppalli Naga described engineers resisting AI not from ignorance but from not wanting to change how they work.
- He recommended identifying early adopters and letting their practices spread organically rather than forcing tools on people.
Velocity Beats Efficiency
- Speed, not efficiency, becomes the strategic divide when competitors ship faster using agentic workflows.
- Praveen said organizational velocity reframes AI from experiment to survival and demands bringing people along.
Delay ROI Measurement
- Avoid measuring ROI too early because CFO-driven metrics push leaders to optimize prematurely.
- Prioritize widespread adoption and treat AI as a capability shift before formalizing financial measurement.
