Why relationships are the hidden infrastructure of AI transformation

By now, most digital and tech leaders have heard some version of the same refrain, that AI adoption is 20% about the technology and 80% about the people. But even when leaders acknowledge the people side of AI, the conversation often moves quickly to skills, workforce planning, talent architecture, or reimagining how work gets done. Those are all important, but Breakthru Beverage Group EVP and CIO Glenn Remoreras believes it’s an incomplete picture.

He argues that the real differentiator in AI transformation is something more human: the ability to build trust, deepen relationships, and lead through connection when uncertainty is high. “As AI accelerates change and organizations transform at unprecedented speed, the real differentiator for leaders will no longer be how fast they move, but how deeply they connect,” he says.

For him, relationships aren’t soft skills or leadership accessories but the infrastructure that allows transformation to happen. When trust is strong, organizations align faster, challenge assumptions more productively, and move through uncertainty with greater confidence. When trust is weak, even the best technology strategy can stall.

Closing the IT and business chasm

Remoreras’s views are rooted in a long-standing conviction about the role of technology in the enterprise. Over the years, he says he became almost maniacal about solving the persistent chasm between IT and the business. In many organizations, business functions still view IT primarily as a service provider, and too often, tech leaders reinforce that mindset by referring to business stakeholders as customers. The language may seem harmless, but Remoreras believes it reflects a deeper problem.

In that model, the business sets strategy while IT receives it, translates it, and aligns execution. The relationship is reactive, and the trust gap remains unresolved. “To me, that paradigm is reactive,” he says, “and it exists largely because the trust gap has never been fully resolved.” The alternative is convergence, where business stakeholders aren’t customers but equal partners. CIOs don’t simply respond to strategy, they help shape it, bringing a clear understanding of how technology capabilities, data, platforms, and AI can change what’s possible.

“When trust exists, a different model emerges,” Remoreras says. “Technology strategy becomes inseparable from business strategy.” That shift matters even more in the age of AI because AI isn’t just another technology deployment, it changes decision-making, work design, customer experience, risk, governance, and the way employees understand their own roles. If technology and business leaders approach AI from opposite sides of the table, adoption will be slower, riskier, and less likely to produce meaningful value.

Trust as an operating system

For Remoreras, trust isn’t a vague aspiration but a core operating infrastructure, and relationships are the primary enabler of that trust. That framing matters because AI introduces uncertainty at multiple levels. Employees may wonder how their work will change, leaders may struggle to separate hype from real opportunity, and functions may disagree about ownership, risk, funding, or pace. Without trust, those tensions can harden into resistance. But with trust, the same tensions can become productive.

Remoreras’s thinking has been shaped in part by the Business Relationship Management discipline. In 2014, he joined the BRM Institute as one of its early founding members and helped contribute to the development of its first body of knowledge. But he’s never viewed BRM as only a role, but rather a capability and leadership philosophy. “It shouldn’t be confined to a handful of dedicated roles,” he says. “It should be a competency shared by leaders across both technology and business functions.”

That distinction is critical. In many companies, relationship management is delegated to specific people or roles. Remoreras sees it as a leadership muscle that must be built across the enterprise, particularly as AI creates new dependencies across functions. The CIO, in this context, isn’t only a technology strategist or transformation leader but a trust builder, translator, challenger, and convener.

The PATH to relationship leadership

To make the idea more concrete, Remoreras developed a framework he calls PATH (Purpose, Agility, Trust, and Humanity), and introduced it in his BRMConnect keynote as a way to describe the leadership capabilities organizations will need in an AI-enabled world.

Purpose comes first because transformation requires more than activity. People need to understand why the work matters. “When people sense you’re driven by purpose, that what you’re doing truly matters, they lean in,” he says. Purpose creates alignment and gives people a shared reason to move through uncertainty together.

Agility is the ability to lead when the path is still forming. For Remoreras, leadership agility is about setting the rhythm, empowering others, and adjusting as the tempo shifts, not controlling every note. Trust is the currency of leadership in the age of AI, and the safety net that allows people to explore boldly, he says. Without it, experimentation slows, transparency fades, and people retreat into self-protection.

Humanity is the final pillar. When employees sense that leaders value technology more than people, they disengage. But when innovation is anchored in ethics, empathy, and fairness, people are more likely to follow with confidence. “Humanity ensures that progress benefits everyone, not just a few,” Remoreras says.

Making AI adoption human

The PATH framework reframes the AI adoption challenge and moves the discussion beyond tools, training, and process redesign without diminishing the importance of any of them. Skills, governance, and use case prioritization all matter. But none will be enough if people don’t trust the leaders setting direction, the teams building solutions, or the organization’s intent for how AI will be used.

That’s why Remoreras’s message is particularly relevant for CIOs. Tech leaders are often accountable for the platforms and capabilities that make AI possible, but they’re also uniquely positioned to shape the relationships that make AI scalable. They can help the organization move from IT as service provider to technology as co-leader, build the connective tissue between strategy, execution, risk, and adoption, and create the conditions where business and tech leaders share ownership for outcomes. This is the leadership work AI requires, says Remoreras.

As machines become more capable, the leadership capabilities that can’t be automated become more valuable. The ability to listen, align, challenge, empathize, build trust, and lead through ambiguity becomes a strategic advantage. The future of AI won’t be determined only by which organizations choose the right platforms or move the fastest, but it’ll also be shaped by which organizations can create enough trust for people to move together.

That’s why relationships may be the hidden infrastructure of AI transformation. Not because they replace technology, but because they make transformation possible.