A higher bar

I’m the guy you don’t want to talk to at the cocktail party. I’ll talk your ear off about AI.

But the advantage of that is a lot of people talk to me about AI.

Nurses. Teachers. Your co-worker. Your boss.

In the last 90 days, these companies have done a layoff connected to AI:

This is short-sighted. Wall Street’s pleasing quarterly mindset to pay for a future token budget.

The cool part about teaching five classes is that I just get to meet a lot of really awesome people. They’re like you and me, just trying to get a bit more done a bit better so they can be home for family dinner.

What I see week in and week out since Chat-GPT arrived

• Your worst teammates get the most benefit from using AI
• A 70-year-old that you wrote off is shipping more amazing stuff than all of your engineers
• Your boss has AI psychosis or is in denial of what is coming

And if I could gift every company an AI psychologist, I would.

I live in New England. Our demographics are brutal. We need every single able worker. The dystopian images being peddled by San Francisco tech bros, I do not see.

I smell the fear, but see the Administrative assistant student from one of my classes who saved her school’s enrollment using AI.

Or the struggling family business that didn’t have to hire someone new because they could get a bit more done with the team that has worked together for 30+ years.

Or the overwhelmed manager juggling 3 jobs and being paid for one who now gets home regularly because they automated their 300+ emails.

We can do better by them. Anyone can learn AI.

The AI does not care if you can’t read or flunked algebra. It can be a great equalizer but that is a hill we have to choose to climb to reach our higher bar. One where AI is not a pink-slip machine dressed up as strategy, but a ladder for the people who have been carrying companies for years. The people answering the emails, calming the customers, fixing the spreadsheet, training the new hire, and still trying to make it home for dinner.

AI can make work colder, smaller, and meaner. Or it can give people their time, confidence, and leverage back. That choice is not technical. It is leadership.