Working with AI
Leading in the AI Era
4 lessons · ~25 min total
01
What AI actually changes for your team (and what it does not)
~6 minSeparate the real shifts (verification burden, review load) from the hype, and know which fundamentals appreciate.
Key takeaways
- When generation gets cheap, verification becomes the bottleneck: plan for review load, not just output volume.
- Fundamentals appreciate (decomposition, debugging, judgment); mechanical skills depreciate (syntax, boilerplate).
- Promise measured gains against your own baseline, never the conference multiplier.
02
Adopt without the hype cycle
~6 minRun AI adoption as measured pilots on a clear policy floor, avoiding both mandates and bans.
Key takeaways
- Mandates breed checkbox usage; bans breed shadow usage with all the risk and none of the visibility.
- Lay a policy floor (approved tools, forbidden data, review rules), then pilot on real work with measures picked in advance.
- Stay loyal to the practice, not the tool: the landscape reshuffles quarterly, transferable skills and cheap swaps win.
03
Evaluating the AI feature your team proposes
~6 minJudge AI feature proposals past the demo: require the eval set, the failure story, and a place in the cost-latency-quality triangle.
Key takeaways
- A demo is a biased sample: no estimate before the eval set, the failure story, and a cost-latency-quality position.
- Always run the boring non-AI baseline on the same eval; it is the bar, and sometimes it wins.
- Ship inside today's economics with expansion triggers, not on the promise of falling model prices.
04
Growing your people when AI does the easy work
~7 minDesign deliberate growth for juniors and seniors when the tasks people learned on are the tasks AI does best.
Key takeaways
- The tasks juniors grew on are the tasks assistants do best: growth must now be designed, not absorbed.
- Make explanation the bar: volume belongs to the assistant, understanding belongs to the engineer.
- Verification is the senior craft of the era: review as teaching, plus protected deep work to keep judgment sharp.
Try a sample check
A sample from the Team Health & Morale track. The real checks unlock with an account.
Team Health & Morale
A usually vocal teammate has gone quiet in meetings for two weeks, and their camera stays off. In your next 1:1, what is your opening move?
Start Leading in the AI Era.
Your first lesson takes five minutes, and you can do it right now without an account.