Moving from doing the work to Conducting

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Something just changed with AI.

Not an update. Not a new feature. Something that's going to change the future of work dramatically.

We're moving from contributing value to choreographing value.

We're moving from doing the work to conducting the work.

And in the process, that is going to fundamentally alter the skills we're looking for, the effectiveness and efficiency with which we can get things done, and introduce a whole bunch of fragility into the workplace.

The nature of work is changing faster than any other transformation we've seen.

What Just Changed

In the last six weeks, AI companies released the harness.

It hasn't gotten the fanfare it deserves. But between Claude Cowork, Claude Code, and Perplexity Computer, it is wild how much of your workflow can now run on its own.

Here's the simplest way to understand it.

Think of the AI model, Claude, ChatGPT, whatever you're using, as a brain. A brain that's extraordinarily capable, but sitting in a jar. No memory. No hands. No ability to move through the world and actually do things. Every conversation starts from scratch.

The harness is the body. The software infrastructure that wraps around the brain, connects it to the outside world, and gives it the ability to observe, think, and act. Not just answer a question, but execute a goal. Step after step, with context, until the job is done.

Just in early January, we were talking about how frustratingly incapable AI was at stringing multiple tasks together. That's completely changed now.

The other night at 9:30, I put Perplexity Computer on a lead generation prompt. I woke up to a list of 5,128 prospects, ranked from highest to lowest. Exactly the way you'd triage it. That would have taken weeks of human effort. It was seven sentences.

Think about what that means for your sales funnel. Think about what that means for your customer acquisition cost. It is dropping, and fast. You can't sleep on this.

The Mistake Organizations Are Making Now

This is the mistake organizations are making: buying their people tools and hoping for results.

It's incredibly common and also very reasonable.

But AI integration needs to be viewed as a strategic challenge, not an IT deployment.

Business leaders need to first define how they create value and then re-engineer and rewire those workflows so they create more value.

AI is the fourth part of that equation, not the first. If you start with the tools, if you start with popcorn improvement, you can't do anything for your organization. And that's what we're seeing everywhere.

If you can't dissect workflows to the task level, you can't benefit from the power of AI. But if you can dissect the sales process, the marketing process, the way you deliver value, the way you schedule and forecast, you can completely change the trajectory of your business.

You can build a more resilient business. You can build a business that can scale. Without it, you've got popcorn productivity. You're saving people time, but getting no profitability as a result.

In the knowledge and service world, you used to be able to rely on the output of the work as a proxy for the capability and competency of your people. That's not the case anymore. Right now, AI demands a mindset shift.

AI integration is a leadership challenge.

If you want to do something about it, this is for you.

Here's the thing we know for certain: if the CEO and leadership team don't lead AI integration, it doesn't work.

So we built the AI Leadership Advantage as a 4 week leadership exercise to lead AI change in the business together.

We’re not talking about finding an extra couple thousand dollars or even saving hours out of your week.

It's about connecting the business outcome you need to improve, to the workflow that needs to change, to the activities being done, and then introducing AI in a way that actually moves the needle. More sales. Better ops. Real results.

We worked with a cladding company on this and they doubled the size of their business in six months.

Leaders put the puzzle together. AI helps you do it faster and better. But only if you lead it.

That's what the AI Leadership Advantage is for.