How AI Is Disrupting Our Industry, and What We Can Do About It

rtificial Intelligence is no longer the future; it is the present. It’s reshaping landscapes, altering industries, and transforming the way we live and work. With its rapid advancement, AI is causing disruption — for better or worse — in every field imaginable. While it promises efficiency and growth, it also brings challenges and uncertainties that professionals and businesses must navigate. What can one do to pivot if AI is disrupting their industry? As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Andrej Hajek.

Andrej Hajek is CEO of FLO Group, an international digital consultancy focused on brand experience, customer experience, data, and AI-driven transformation, with operations across Europe, UK and Australia and clients including Erste Group, Porsche, Heineken, Fortuna, and Domain. Over a career spanning two decades, he has worked across large enterprises and built businesses from the ground up. He is known for bridging the gap between strategy and delivery — bringing the commercial perspective of someone shaped by global enterprise environments and the practical instincts of someone who has built and scaled businesses under real pressure.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into our discussion our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

I never set out to become an entrepreneur, and there isn’t a single specific moment I can point to. Looking back, the defining theme of my career is that I have always been naturally drawn to complex, politically sensitive, or highly ambitious challenges.

During my 15 years working within the private and public sectors in Australia, whether leading digital transformations or heading a government digital team, my primary focus was always to thoroughly rethink how things operate, form high-impact task forces, and drive execution by breaking rules within boundaries.

Over time, this mindset evolved into a realization that I genuinely thrive in high-stakes environments. In 2018, I met Marian Grofcik (now Chief Growth Officer at FLO), who shared an identical mindset and a massive tolerance for chaos. He is an absolute machine when it comes to tackling things that seem impossible. We founded Bluez.io, a Salesforce consulting entity, with the clear premise of delivering projects faster, better, and with total accountability. At the time, that ambition might have sounded naive; today, it looks completely obvious. Bluez.io later merged into the FLO group, where I became CEO of the combined entity.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

So many things have changed since the Bluez.io days; we are no longer a small startup or just a specialized shop. FLO operates right at the intersection of brand experience, customer experience, data, and AI. While many consultancies treat these as entirely separate disciplines, customers experience them as one single journey, so we built FLO entirely around that reality.

Several core elements make us stand out in the market. First, we are intentionally boutique because we know that deep focus creates immense leverage for our clients. Second, we prefer engagements where we sit at the decision-making table and take full responsibility for the ultimate business outcomes, which sets us miles apart from traditional consultancies. Lastly, we successfully combine boutique agility with international experience, having delivered complex projects across Europe, Australia, and beyond.

A great example of our CX work is Domain in Australia. We delivered one of the fastest Salesforce Media Cloud implementations in the entire region. Our success came down to our willingness to challenge long-held assumptions, move with extreme speed, and take absolute ownership of the results instead of letting slow approval chains and internal bureaucracy become an excuse for missed outcomes.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Regarding the first trait, vision, I have always focused heavily on what’s possible rather than what’s already in front of me. Most people wait for complete certainty, but by the time certainty arrives, the opportunity is already crowded.

The second trait is persistence. People dramatically underestimate how long meaningful outcomes take. Building a business, entering new markets, and transforming large organizations takes years of sustained effort and mental energy. You must stay fully committed long after the initial excitement fades.

The third is courage. Leadership regularly requires making bold decisions that are highly unpopular in the short term but absolutely necessary for long-term health. Sometimes your primary responsibility is to make the right choice rather than the comfortable one.

Let’s now move to the main point of our discussion about AI. Can you explain how AI is disrupting your industry? Is this disruption hurting or helping your bottom line?

AI has already fundamentally disrupted our industry, and the real question is how quickly companies adapt to the reality that the economics of technology services have changed permanently. For decades, this industry built its model around selling time and manual hours. AI puts immense pressure on that legacy setup because tasks that previously took days can now be completed in hours.

For FLO, this shift is overwhelmingly positive. Customers deserve to benefit from better quality, faster delivery, and lower costs, and the industry must evolve to meet that expectation.

Internally, AI has streamlined our tech office, accelerating delivery speeds and making interactions richer. Externally, it allows us to deliver superior client outcomes more efficiently. We provide everyone with access to AI through cloud licenses, and we strictly expect new employees to know how to leverage it. Commercial value is moving rapidly away from pure manual effort and shifting toward judgment, creativity, and strategic problem-solving. AI effectively eliminates excuses and raises the bar for everyone.

Which specific AI technology has had the most significant impact on your industry?

Agentic AI, without question. While the ability to write code is already becoming a standard market expectation, the true transformation lies in agent-driven solutions, orchestrations, and tools like Claude Code.

This technology deeply understands context, reasons through complex problems, executes multi-step tasks, and continuously improves its own output. We are moving rapidly into an environment where AI functions as a true collaborator. At FLO, we utilize AI across automated business analysis, architecture, user story drafting, test automation, and fully automated production deployments. Tasks that previously required an entire array of specialists can now be executed by smaller, highly productive teams operating at a much higher level.

Can you share a pivotal moment when you recognized the profound impact AI would have on your sector?

It has been building up steadily over the last three years. The first wave of consumer-based applications like ChatGPT or Claude on my desktop immediately proved to be an enormous time-saver for basic analysis and communication, though they still felt like high-level productivity tools.

The profound aha moment arrived with vibe coding and agentic coding tools. I watched an AI system systematically analyze a complex code base, plug in data sources, generate new functionality, fix issues, test itself, and continuously iterate with minimal human input. Seeing that level of capability made me realize I was collaborating with the equivalent of a competent team member. That was the exact moment I stopped questioning if AI would reshape our industry, and began focusing entirely on how fast it would happen.

How are you preparing your workforce for the integration of AI, and what skills do you believe will be most valuable in an AI-enhanced future?

We integrate AI directly into our core operating model on multiple levels. While everyone has access to tools like Gemini or Claude for general productivity, we embed AI fundamentally into all design, advisory, and hardcore engineering processes. Our teams utilize top-tier professional tools, like Claude Code or Codex, to eliminate significant portions of manual effort. We also invest heavily in training and are partnering with Anthropic to support our people in getting certified.

A common misconception is that the future belongs solely to those who master prompt engineering. In reality, the future belongs to people who know how to think critically, challenge assumptions, ask the right questions, and successfully combine human judgment with machine capability. As AI becomes more powerful, these cognitive skills become increasingly valuable.

What are the biggest challenges in upskilling your workforce for an AI-centric future?

There are two main challenges. The first is the psychological mindset shift required to move away from how an engineer has traditionally operated over the last decade. When core tasks become automated, it deeply impacts professional identity alongside established operational processes.

The second major challenge is navigating the underlying economics. While AI introduces massive efficiencies during software development, it also introduces entirely new operational variables like token consumption, governance requirements, and security considerations. Figuring out the exact dynamics and economics of native AI delivery took substantial effort, though we have managed to resolve it well.

We are currently living through a period of artificial abundance. AI prices are heavily subsidized by major providers prioritizing market share over immediate profitability, meaning these providers are not making profits yet. Investors will eventually demand returns, so I do expect baseline costs to increase.

However, big players have already had to pull back on aggressive token pricing due to resistance from cost-conscious businesses, so any increases must respect what the market can actually afford to pay. Over time, I believe AI will follow the exact path of cloud computing: infrastructure costs will stabilise, while the real commercial value shifts toward higher-level services, deep customization, and specific business outcomes.

What ethical considerations does AI introduce into your industry, and how are you tackling these concerns?

The core ethical challenge centers on knowing when to trust the technology and when to question it. AI can be incredibly convincing and articulate while remaining factually wrong. Because of this risk, organizations must establish strict governance, transparency, and human oversight. At FLO, we encourage widespread AI adoption, but we completely refuse to outsource core responsibility to machines. Human accountability remains non-negotiable; AI is here to augment our judgment, never to replace it.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “Five Things You Need To Do, If AI Is Disrupting Your Industry”? If you can, please share a story or an example for each.

1. Accept the reality of a structural shift. Many businesses still treat AI as a passing trend they can simply wait out. This is a profound mistake because AI represents a permanent structural shift in how knowledge work is executed.

2. Bring your entire workforce along. A frequent error companies make is isolating AI experimentation within a tiny, specialized team. True AI adoption must become deeply embedded across the entire organizational culture, bringing every single employee into the fold.

3. Redesign workflows instead of deleting roles. Leaders often rush to ask which jobs AI will completely replace. The far more effective approach is to focus on how entire workflows can be creatively redesigned now that these powerful new machine capabilities exist.

4. Prioritize tangible economics over the hype curve. Success should never be measured by the raw number of licenses you purchase. Instead, focus entirely on measurable outcomes, such as accelerated delivery speeds, heightened productivity, and elevated customer experiences.

5. Move long before you feel fully comfortable. Waiting for absolute certainty usually guarantees that the window of opportunity has already closed. The greatest risk in today’s landscape is waiting until your competitors have completely mastered the technology.

What are the most common misconceptions about AI within your industry, and how do you address them?

The primary misconception is driven by the hype curve, which is equating buying AI licenses with actual AI adoption. It is exactly like purchasing a gym membership and expecting to instantly get fit.

Leaders frequently hope that rolling out OpenAI or Anthropic licenses will automatically generate immediate 30% to 40% cost savings, which simply does not happen without actively shifting behaviors, processes, and corporate culture.

The second misconception sits at the opposite extreme, where people dismiss AI as mere hype. Both views miss the mark. AI will not solve all organizational problems on its own, but it will fundamentally reshape business operations. The companies that realistically understand both its true potential and its practical limitations will benefit the most.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

A quote I have come to firmly believe over the years is that comfort is usually a leading indicator that you’re no longer growing. Virtually every pivotal milestone in my life involved stepping directly into deep uncertainty, including moving across continents, launching businesses, or making tough leadership choices. True growth rarely happens when everything feels safe and predictable.

Off-topic, but I’m curious. As someone steering the ship, what thoughts or concerns often keep you awake at night? How do those thoughts influence your daily decision-making process?

I rarely worry about competitors; I focus almost entirely on the threat of irrelevance. Markets, technologies, and customer expectations evolve at a breakneck pace. The exact moment a company assumes yesterday’s success guarantees tomorrow’s relevance is when its decline begins.

This mindset heavily influences our daily strategy at FLO. We constantly ask ourselves if we were starting this business completely from scratch today, what we would do differently. The answer to that question is always where our next opportunity lies.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I would launch a movement against passive consumption to serve as a massive wake-up call. It always strikes me how hundreds of thousands of people can passionately rally or even riot over something like a football club, while critical global problems fail to draw a crowd. We live in a society where people expend immense energy consuming opinions and online outrage, yet spend very little time actively building.

The world currently faces a severe shortage of builders, not opinions. Real progress comes entirely from individuals who choose to actively participate, create, and solve problems rather than just watch from the sidelines. Shifting our collective focus from pure consumption to active creation would make our biggest challenges far easier to solve.

How can our readers further follow you online?

You can connect with me on LinkedIn.

Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights.