A lot of companies I've worked with rely on heroes... The Engineer who knows all the edge cases The Product Manager who holds everything together through sheer effort The Operations lead who manually fixes broken processes every week We've all worked with them. They are invaluable. Other people joke about needing to "clone" them. Maybe you are one of them? (for better or worse, I typically have NOT been... I've usually defaulted to teams and systems to produce results) Historically, companies...

One pattern I’m seeing: The companies getting the most value from AI are NOT approaching it as a technology initiative. They’re treating it as an actual operating-model shift. The struggling companies tend to ask: “Which AI tool should we buy?” “How do we deploy copilots?” “How do we automate tasks?” The successful ones ask different questions: “Where are our decision bottlenecks?” “Where does work get stuck?” “Which roles are overloaded with coordination?” “How should workflows change if...

There’s a popular narrative right now that AI will massively flatten organizations. Fewer managers Smaller teams More automation Some of that is already true. But I think the much bigger effect will be different: AI is going to expose organizational weaknesses much faster. Weak prioritization? You’ll now execute bad ideas faster. Poor alignment between Sales, Product, and Engineering? AI increases the volume of output — and therefore the cost of confusion. Unclear ownership? Now multiple...