For most of the last century, leadership was a writing job. The memo, the strategy doc, the all-hands script — these were the artifacts through which a leader made themselves legible to an organization. Models can now produce all of them, in any voice, in seconds. The interesting question is what that leaves the leader to do.
From Authorship to Judgment
The value is moving up the stack. Anyone can generate a coherent argument; far fewer people can decide which argument is worth making, to whom, and when. Leaders who still measure their contribution in pages written are measuring the wrong thing.
"The scarce skill is no longer producing the artifact. It is being accountable for the call the artifact recommends."
The New Vocabulary
Three words keep surfacing in the conversations we have had with operators adapting well: taste, conviction, and pace. Taste is what tells you which of the model's drafts is actually good. Conviction is what lets you ship one of them. Pace is the metabolism that turns those two into a compounding advantage rather than a one-off.
Five Habits for the AI Era
- 01Read every model draft as a candidate, never as a conclusion.
- 02Spend more time on the question than on the answer.
- 03Make the decision in the room, not in the document.
- 04Keep a personal taste file — examples of work you would sign.
- 05Be loudly accountable for the calls the model helped you make.
What Stays Human
The room. The pause before a hard answer. The willingness to be the person whose name is on the decision. None of that is being automated. If anything, the leaders we admire are spending more time on it, not less.
