Day 2 – Breakout Session 8 – 2:15-2:45 PM
Room: Affectiv
Airplane Thinking Will Keep Your Company Grounded
Amy Schutte · RizeCon 2026 · Pocatello
Adding AI to your company is not a tech stack decision — it’s an identity crisis dressed up as a software rollout. Amy Schutte introduced The Kármán Effect, a six-step framework for leading teams through the human transformation that sits underneath every AI adoption. She built it after three years of daily AI experimentation and hands-on implementation work with companies in the five to fifty million dollar range, and she backed it with brain science, aerospace physics, and one client story that explains why 15% adoption isn’t a training problem.
AI is moving fast, the pressure to adopt is relentless, and most leaders are treating it exactly like every other tool implementation. That instinct will stall the rollout — not because the technology is too complex, but because no one told employees who they are on the other side of it. The companies crossing that line are the ones doing the identity work, not just the AI training.
What she covered
The Kármán Line as a change metaphor. Theodore von Kármán was an aerospace engineer obsessed with finding the exact point where Earth ends and space begins — 62 miles up, 100 kilometers from sea level. Below that line, airplanes work. Lift works. Everything that has always worked in your business works. But above it, you need a rocket. You need a fundamentally different operating system. Amy’s insight: you cannot cross the Kármán line with an airplane, no matter how much training you add, how hard you hustle, or how good a pilot you become. The same is true for AI adoption — more bells and whistles on your current approach won’t get you there.
Identity as the hidden variable. Amy’s working definition for the session: identity is the story you tell yourself about who you are, what makes you valuable, and what gives you meaning and purpose. When companies introduce AI, they think they’re asking employees to learn a new tool. What they’re actually asking is for employees to shift that story completely — and no one is saying so out loud. Brains are wired to survive and to conserve energy. Asking someone to do both simultaneously — adapt to a threat while burning enormous cognitive and emotional calories — triggers resistance that looks like a technology problem but isn’t.
The Voice of Resistance. These are the phrases that signal an identity line has been hit, not a skill gap: “I’m just not techy.” “I’m too old to learn that.” “It’s always worked this way.” Amy calls them sneaky because leaders often take them at face value and respond with more training. The real translation is: I don’t know who I am on the other side of this change. Listening for these phrases — and understanding what they actually mean — is the first move a leader can make.
The Kármán Effect: six steps. Amy’s framework is a spiral, not a checklist, because transformation work is human and brilliantly messy. The six steps are: Recognize — name the line, make the identity shift visible for your team, and listen for the stories underneath the resistance. Responsibility — not everyone wants to become a rocket, and mandates don’t produce innovative, empowered people; create the conditions where crossing feels like a choice. Reframe — listen to your people’s stories, surface what they love about their work, and help them replace weak narratives (“I’m the babysitter for my AI”) with strong ones (“I’m an innovator, I see the gaps, I have discernment”). Repetition — neuroscience requires reps; normalize practicing AI daily, in personal life and at work, until the new story becomes a physical habit. Recalibrate — old identity tends to resurface around the three- to six-month mark; this is the moment to bring in outside help, the way Artemis uses ground control. Reflect — AI moves fast, but slowing down to ask whether your current stories are still serving you is what lets you cross the next line, and the one after that.
What attendees got
Amy offered a practical entry point for leaders who want to begin the identity conversation with their teams: a half-day offsite or a series of one-on-ones structured around three questions — What do you love about your job? What lights you up that isn’t in your job description? What do you not like? She framed this as diagnostic listening, not a culture exercise, and pointed to the moment a single brave employee told her team the real reason for their 15% adoption rate as proof of what those conversations can surface.
One story that landed
Amy was helping a company implement an AI tool that looked like a slam dunk on paper. Three to four months in, adoption sat at 15%. When she sat down with the team to find out why, one person was brave enough to say it plainly: that was my favorite part of my job. That was my purpose at work, and you took it away. Here’s a bunch of stuff I don’t like — you can automate that. But not that. It wasn’t resistance to technology. It was grief over a purpose that had been automated without anyone acknowledging it. The fix wasn’t more training. It was a conversation that should have happened on day one.
“It is not resistance to technology that you’re hearing — it is resistance to a shift in purpose.” — Amy Schutte
“You can’t cross the Kármán line with an airplane, even if you add more bells and whistles, or hustle harder, or become a better pilot.” — Amy Schutte
About the speaker
Amy Schutte is a communication and brand strategist who works primarily with companies in the five to fifty million dollar range on rebrands, mergers, new leadership transitions, and AI adoption. Three years ago, after watching a Slack channel full of seasoned marketers spiral into panic over an AI demo, she went into the lab — using AI nearly every day since to understand its ethical, legal, and practical dimensions. The Kármán Effect framework emerged from the patterns she kept seeing repeat across every company she helped: the technology was fine; the identity work was missing.