Every GBS leader is facing the same problem: how do you build an AI strategy when the technology moves faster than any organization can absorb it? Chasing every new breakthrough isn’t a strategy, and history suggests it’s a reliable way to accumulate technical debt.

In this episode of GBS Rewired, Sally Fletcher talks with Leigh Nicholson, Strategic Solutions Lead at Takeda Global Finance CoE. Leigh’s career spans large-scale transformation at PwC and GBS transition and transformation leadership at Heineken and Philips. He has lived through the ERP and RPA waves and is now navigating the shift to Agentic AI, so he knows what separates lasting transformations from those that quietly fall apart.

The conversation covers what earlier automation waves got wrong and what GBS leaders need to unlearn before AI can scale. It also covers the foundations that have to be in place before quick wins turn into fragmented solutions. Leigh weighs in on the growing debate over who should own AI (IT, the business, or a partnership between them) and on how to divide responsibilities without duplicating capabilities or creating new silos. He explains why governance has to be designed in from the start rather than bolted on later. Finally, he describes how leaders can stay genuinely optimistic about AI while keeping the critical thinking this moment demands.

Learn more about Hypatos and our Agentic AI Workforce here.

Follow host Sally Fletcher on LinkedIn for episode updates.

What does a GBS team actually look like when half of transactional work is automated? In this episode, Shaji Farooq, CEO of Chazey Partners, joins the podcast to unpack the new people strategy for a human-led, AI-enabled world. We explore where leaders are getting the balance between people and AI wrong, what "human-led" really means when agents make the first call on most decisions, and how the profile of a good hire is changing. We also look at how org charts, reporting lines and spans of control are being redrawn as manual work thins out.

To learn more about Chazey Partners, visit their website here.

As Agentic AI moves from concept to capability, the hardest part of GBS leadership isn't the technology; it's the judgment required to deploy it well. In this episode of GBS Rewired, host Sally Fletcher sits down with Dr. Sumit Mitra, CEO of Tesco Business Solutions, to unpack what an Agentic or "Intelligent GBS" really looks like in practice: how to manage hybrid human-agent teams, which tasks should never be automated, and the practical steps leaders can take right now to get ahead of the curve. Drawing on Tesco Business Solutions' track record, including two wins of SSON's World's Best GBS and seven consecutive years in SSON's Top 20 Most Admired GBS, Sumit shares what separates a good GBS from a truly great one.