Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 4

Annie Wilson On The Growth Dilemma – This Week’s Six Pixels of Separation Podcast

Episode #998 of Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to:

Annie Wilson is a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and co-author, with Ryan Hamilton, of The Growth Dilemma – Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things. Her work examines the deep interplay between consumer behavior, culture and brand identity, helping leaders understand why growth often creates as many risks as it does opportunities. In The Growth Dilemma, Annie unpacks how efforts to reach new customer segments can clash with the values of loyal buyers, sometimes threatening the very meaning of a brand. Drawing from real-world examples (from Apple’s software missteps to Gucci’s unintended association with reality TV fame) she reveals how scarcity, exclusivity and cultural perception shape brand power in ways most executives overlook. Beyond brand strategy, Annie’s research and teaching explore the ways marketing has evolved as a discipline, especially in an era of AI, fragmented media and globalization. She highlights how authenticity, community and cultural nuance are becoming non-negotiable for sustainable success, and why short-termism remains one of the most dangerous traps for modern marketers. For those navigating the intersection of consumer connection and cultural influence, Annie offers a critical lens on how to balance growth with integrity, how to adapt without betraying your core identity and how to see branding not just as a commercial practice, but as a cultural one. This conversation is essential listening for anyone grappling with the future of marketing in an age of shifting consumer expectations, technological disruption and global homogenization. Enjoy the conversation…

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via Apple Podcast or whatever platform you may choose):  #998 – Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast

Before you go… ThinkersOne  is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.

SPOS #998 – Annie Wilson On The Growth Dilemma

Welcome to episode #998 of Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast.

Annie Wilson is a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and co-author, with Ryan Hamilton, of The Growth Dilemma – Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things. Her work examines the deep interplay between consumer behavior, culture and brand identity, helping leaders understand why growth often creates as many risks as it does opportunities. In The Growth Dilemma, Annie unpacks how efforts to reach new customer segments can clash with the values of loyal buyers, sometimes threatening the very meaning of a brand. Drawing from real-world examples (from Apple’s software missteps to Gucci’s unintended association with reality TV fame) she reveals how scarcity, exclusivity and cultural perception shape brand power in ways most executives overlook. Beyond brand strategy, Annie’s research and teaching explore the ways marketing has evolved as a discipline, especially in an era of AI, fragmented media and globalization. She highlights how authenticity, community and cultural nuance are becoming non-negotiable for sustainable success, and why short-termism remains one of the most dangerous traps for modern marketers. For those navigating the intersection of consumer connection and cultural influence, Annie offers a critical lens on how to balance growth with integrity, how to adapt without betraying your core identity and how to see branding not just as a commercial practice, but as a cultural one. This conversation is essential listening for anyone grappling with the future of marketing in an age of shifting consumer expectations, technological disruption and global homogenization. Enjoy the conversation…

Running time: 1:01:53.Hello from beautiful Montreal.Listen and subscribe over at Apple Podcasts.Listen and subscribe over at Spotify.Please visit and leave comments on the blog – Six Pixels of Separation.Feel free to connect to me directly on Facebook here: Mitch Joel on Facebook.Check out ThinkersOne.or you can connect on LinkedIn.…or on X.Here is my conversation with Annie Wilson.The Growth Dilemma – Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things.Follow Annie on LinkedIn.

Chapters:

(00:00) – The Changing Landscape of Marketing.
(02:56) – AI’s Role in Marketing Education.
(05:49) – The Evolving Perception of Marketing as a Career.
(09:13) – Advertising in a Fragmented Media World.
(12:07) – Branding in a Personalized Market.
(14:59) – The Growth Dilemma: Balancing Consumerism and Sustainability.
(33:01) – Cultural Influence Over Brand Identity.
(35:53) – The Balance of Growth and Authenticity.
(39:01) – The Evolution of Consumer Connection.
(41:47) – Navigating Brand Growth and Consumer Expectations.
(47:07) – Short-Termism in Marketing Strategies.
(51:58) – Scarcity and Exclusivity in Brand Strategy.
(55:52) – Consumer Perception and Brand Influence.

Download the Podcast here: Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast – Episode #998.

Before you go… ThinkersOne  is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.

Six Links That Make You Think #791

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (Just Evil Enough, Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, Interesting Bits, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see.”

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another:

Canada’s Population Clock (Real-Time Model) – Statistics Canada. “When I was born, there were half as many humans on the planet as there are now. I’ve always said Canada has 30 million inhabitants; turns out, it’s now 41 million – and counting. This is the real-time population clock, thanks to Statscan!” (Alistair for Hugh). NPR Tiny Desk Contest 2023 – Andrea Gibson – Maga Hat In The Chemo Room – YouTube . “This absolutely broke me. I only heard about Colorado’s poet laureate Andrea Gibson from her death, when a friend suggested I check out her work. This piece, called ‘MAGA Hat In The Chemo Room’, is an astonishing piece of art, part humor, part lament, and all bare soul. Watch it with someone you love, then hug them close.” (Alistair for Mitch). Discord In Every Class? – Pronita Mehrortra – LinkedIn . “This is a fascinating unintended consequence of AI, that I can relate to. In this case, instructors are reporting that once-busy class Discords (internet forum/discussion space) are now silent. Why? Because students are just asking ChatGPT for how to solve question 4 or whatever. One the one hand, ‘amazing, AI is good at helping students’ … on the other hand, what happens when we remove the social building connections and … faith in humanity? … that comes from asking a question and having a fellow-human answer you? I notice this myself, I used to use Reddit for all sorts of questions about some of my hobbies: gardening, ukulele, vinegar, fermenting and ginger bug making, minor woodwoork projects, etc. I used to be delighted by the wonderful, thoughtful and human responses I got – often tens of helpful answers to simple questions. Always a delight to check Reddit the next day and see people who helped. But now I just ask GPT. Answers are fast and mostly accurate. It’s probably better for getting done what I want to get done. So much worse for my general sense of strangers being kind, and my faith in humanity’s willingness to help. How many more of these surprising side effects will AI generate?” (Hugh for Alistair).       Bringing Human Nature Back In – Francis Fukuyama – Persuasion . “Human nature is (probably?) a dirty word in much of the progressive intellectual world. In some ways the project of modern progressivism is to say: we can invent our own nature, it doesn’t exist. Francis Fukayama thinks it’s time human nature be rehabilitated.” (Hugh for Mitch).   Learners Will Inherit The Earth – Paul Jun – Kimchi & Gabagool – Substack. “So many smart themes here. The blunt truth is this: big crushes small… unless the small are willing to learn fast enough to become big. The Luddites swung hammers at looms instead of mastering them and history moved on without them. AI is today’s loom. We can posture, protest and moralize, but the bulldozer doesn’t care… it just keeps rolling. What matters is whether we have the curiosity and discipline to treat these tools as raw material, not replacement. Jun points to how industries always crumble and reform… photography went from rarefied craft to iPhone ubiquity, design from decks and delays to working prototypes spun up in hours with Cursor. The incumbents cling but the learners leap. He calls out our ‘selective outrage’ and how easy it is to decry AI’s energy use while ordering Uber Eats on the latest iPhone. Outrage doesn’t compound but learning does. That’s the hinge of the whole piece: adaptation isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s the survival tax these days. Why do I agree? Because I’ve seen this movie before. The Internet, search, social, ecommerce, mobile… every cycle rewarded the learners and left the ‘learned’ behind. AI is no different (and is, probably, a bigger deal). The choice isn’t whether to embrace it…it’s whether to stay small or get big enough to matter. Also need to hat-tip Sentiers (I think I disvered this pieceover there)” (Mitch for Alistair). Is AI The Death Of Creativity? – Brian Eno – Baratunde Thurston . “As you know, Brian Eno is one of those rare artists I could happily listen to read the dictionary… his mind just works differently, and it makes you want to lean in. In this conversation, he reminds us that technology is never just about what it was built for… it’s about the accidents, the sideways discoveries, the serendipity it unleashes. A tape recorder became his instrument. A microphone turned singers into crooners. And now AI (mediocre, to many, on its surface) could become fertile ground if you treat it like a garden, not a blueprint. Eno is less worried about the tools themselves than about who owns them, and more interested in the collective ‘senius’ of culture than the myth of the lone genius. Even the generative documentary about his life refuses one tidy narrative, offering thousands of possible versions depending on how the pieces are rearranged. That feels true of creativity, business and culture alike. Tools democratize, the old guard resists and the learners adapt. What I love most is how he frames art and technology not as opposing forces but as co-conspirators in surprise. It’s a reminder that unpredictability isn’t a bug… it’s the feature. And in that sense, maybe the real lesson is simple: keep learning, stay open and embrace the unexpected.” (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on X, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

Before you go… ThinkersOne  is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.

We Who Wrestle With AI

They sound like us.

Full sentences… polished pauses… even the occasional joke or quip (if you’ve spent time using ChatGPT voice or Google NotebookLM, you know).
These machines are no longer just clunky tools doing tasks.
They’ve become voices, mirrors (a word I have used a lot)… even echoes of our tone, rhythm and timbre (if you don’t believe me, watch Rick Beato’s clip on AI music).

Personally, I’ve had multiple instances that have made me smile.

Smile in the same way I would when a colleague would deliver something that was… just right.
Different enough that it surprised me.
Smart enough that I thought it was better than something I could have delivered.
Smile because it knew where I wanted to go next… and gave other directions I had not anticipated.

But they don’t feel like us.

That’s the line… the sliver… the uncanny gap between imitation and experience… the human experience.
Because if creativity can be mimicked… if conversations can be cloned… if hesitation itself can be modelled… what’s left that is truly human?

We comfort ourselves with the myth of originality.

That only we stumble into the unplanned.
That only we improvise the imperfect.
That only we create the breathtakingly new.

I think the tension that we are all wrestling with is that AI can make that story harder to tell. 

It produces things that look (and are) original (have you seen this: Last Call Before A.G.I – Found Footage From The Future).
That pass as new… that trick our eyes and ears into nodding along.
My wrestling with this technology is usually around confronting the uncomfortable…

That maybe creativity isn’t about the output at all… maybe it’s about the feeling.

And then… do I care if that feeling was prompted by someone any differently than it would if it was hand-crafted by them? (this is what I mean by Vibe Content).
We know that machines don’t feel.
They don’t ache… they don’t thrill… they don’t love… they don’t grieve… they don’t care.

So the real work isn’t about beating them at their game… it’s about remembering ours.

To value the shaky idea in a quiet room that may or may not go anywhere.
To go beyond what AI outputs and think (much more deeply) about using it to challenge our ideas, to unlock new ones or push opposing perspectives to make us reflect more.
To notice the pauses that carry more weight than the answer.
To prize connection over polish.

The danger isn’t that machines become too human… it’s that we outsource what being human feels like.

That’s also the wrestle… that’s also the work.
It’s in the everyday when I have to decide what makes an AI output better than something that I could have come up with.
It’s in the everyday when I have to decide how many more inputs/outputs I need to get something to where it needs to be.

Before we ask leaders to be AI-first, it might be better to dig deep into how AI is really affecting their daily work (and the type of leadership work that AI eats for breakfast – drafts strategy decks, parses data, role-plays management conversations…).

Most of the discourse is stuck on outputs… when the real question is about the person feeding the inputs, and how they’re thinking about what AI even is… and what they want to do with it…

That’s the wrestle… that’s the work…

(Adam Brotman and I explored this in depth on this week’s Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast. He’s the co-author of AI First – The Playbook For A Future-Proof Business And Brand).

Before you go… ThinkersOne is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.

Culture Rot In The Age Of Screens

We used to worry that smartphones were melting our attention spans.

Turns out the bigger story may be how they’re eroding something deeper… our ability to be present, to care, to act with conscience… in our actual, breathing, protein forms.
There’s a new study floating around that claims that we’re not just distracted (The troubling decline in conscientiousness via Financial Times).
It says we’re becoming less conscientious… less anchored in physical space… more anxious when confronted with real people instead of pixels.

And yes, there has been a lot of back and forth around just how credible all of this research is.

It’s a good reminder that correlation isn’t causation, but the timing is hard to ignore. 
Think about what we’re being told.
We’re not just fidgeting in meetings or zoning out mid-conversation.
But an entire generation losing the muscle memory of showing up with focus, empathy and accountability.

The irony is brutal.

The device that connects us to everyone… is making us worse at being with anyone.
In public spaces, we retreat to screens instead of eye contact.
At dinner tables, we scroll instead of speak.
Worse, we hand the kids a tablet and call it peace.
At work, we dodge responsibility by disappearing into endless notifications.

It’s not just bad manners.

It’s the quiet rewiring of social trust.
Because conscientiousness isn’t about productivity hacks or checking to-do lists.
It’s about caring enough to follow through. 
To notice others… to be accountable when no one is watching… to answer the phone when someone wants to talk (not text).

And when that atrophies… society starts to wobble.

You feel it in the rising baseline of anxiety.
The awkward silence when phones come out.
The exhaustion of always being “on” but rarely being with.
When you feel like The Olds because you would rather meet for coffee than be on Slack.

This isn’t just about you and your screen time.

It’s about what happens when we all carry this low-level erosion of presence into the culture at large.
We’re “here” physically but “everywhere” digitally… so… nowhere. 
What happens when our neighborhoods feel less neighborly?
When our workplaces feel less human and much more transactional?
When our kids grow up more fluent in TikTok than in small talk?
We used to worry technology would make us dumber.
Now the worry is it’s making us lonelier… in a crowd.

So maybe the question isn’t how to “detox” from screens.

The real question is whether we can rebuild the capacity to care… to show up… to be with one another in ways that no device can simulate.
And, maybe, we need to help our kids like we did when we started talking about car seats, using seat belts and smoking… safety first.
Because if not… this isn’t just brain rot.

It’s culture rot.

This is what Robyn Flynn and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM.

Mitch Joel · Culture Rot In The Age Of Screens – The Elias Makos Show – CJAD 800

Before you go… ThinkersOne is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.

Adam Brotman On Being AI First – This Week’s Six Pixels of Separation Podcast

Episode #997 of Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to:

What happens when nearly everything a marketer or strategist does today becomes instant, automatic… and nearly free? That’s the premise of AI First, the new book from Adam Brotman (my guest this week) and his co-author Andy Sack, which confronts the existential shift that AI is bringing to brand strategy, customer experience and creative work. Adam, the former Chief Digital Officer at Starbucks and co-founder of the strategic consultancy Forum3, brings firsthand experience building digital platforms that changed how global businesses operate. In this episode, we dive into what it really means to become an “AI First” organization, not just layering on tools, but redesigning your business from the ground up. You’ll hear why OpenAI’s Sam Altman believes 95% of current marketing agency work will be handled by AI, and what that means for leaders, teams and the future of creative differentiation. We explore the difference between being AI-aware and AI-native, how to run internal pilots that create momentum, and what the future holds for customer loyalty and personalization in a post-human-first creative landscape. For anyone wondering what practical transformation looks like in an AI-saturated world and how to build companies that still feel human, this conversation maps the next five years and beyond. Enjoy the conversation…

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via Apple Podcast or whatever platform you may choose):  #997 – Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast

Before you go… ThinkersOne  is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.

SPOS #997 – Adam Brotman On Being AI First

Welcome to episode #997 of Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast.

What happens when nearly everything a marketer or strategist does today becomes instant, automatic… and nearly free? That’s the premise of AI First, the new book from Adam Brotman (my guest this week) and his co-author Andy Sack, which confronts the existential shift that AI is bringing to brand strategy, customer experience and creative work. Adam, the former Chief Digital Officer at Starbucks and co-founder of the strategic consultancy Forum3, brings firsthand experience building digital platforms that changed how global businesses operate. In this episode, we dive into what it really means to become an “AI First” organization, not just layering on tools, but redesigning your business from the ground up. You’ll hear why OpenAI’s Sam Altman believes 95% of current marketing agency work will be handled by AI, and what that means for leaders, teams and the future of creative differentiation. We explore the difference between being AI-aware and AI-native, how to run internal pilots that create momentum, and what the future holds for customer loyalty and personalization in a post-human-first creative landscape. For anyone wondering what practical transformation looks like in an AI-saturated world and how to build companies that still feel human, this conversation maps the next five years and beyond. Enjoy the conversation…

Running time: 52:22.Hello from beautiful Montreal.Listen and subscribe over at Apple Podcasts.Listen and subscribe over at Spotify.Please visit and leave comments on the blog – Six Pixels of Separation.Feel free to connect to me directly on Facebook here: Mitch Joel on Facebook.Check out ThinkersOne.or you can connect on LinkedIn.…or on X.Here is my conversation with Adam Brotman.AI First.Forum3.Check out his podcast.Follow Adam on LinkedIn.

Chapters:

(00:00) – The Journey of Digital Transformation.
(05:05) – AI First: Understanding the New Paradigm.
(10:00) – The Role of AI in Business Strategy.
(15:09) – Navigating the Future of Work with AI.
(19:50) – The Promise and Challenges of AGI.
(31:58) – The Rise of AI and Human Collaboration.
(34:07) – Navigating the AI Landscape: Challenges and Opportunities.
(37:27) – Intelligence vs. Imitation: Understanding AI’s Capabilities.
(40:57) – Creativity in the Age of AI: A New Frontier.
(43:30) – The Role of Empathy in AI Interactions.
(46:41) – Paradigm Shifts: Embracing Change in Technology.
(49:01) – Responsible AI: Balancing Innovation and Ethics.
(52:44) – The Future of Work: Adapting to AI Transformations.

Download the Podcast here: Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast – Episode #997.

Before you go… ThinkersOne  is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.

Six Links That Make You Think #790

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (Just Evil Enough, Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, Interesting Bits, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see.”

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another:

Cultural Bias In LLMs – Shav Vimalendiran. “My current take on AI is that Large Language Models work because language somehow contains the mechanism of understanding, and by analyzing relationships in language we somehow extract the deep structure of that understanding. Different cultures see the world differently (this is called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) – and often speak different languages. But it turns out that AIs think like Protestant Europeans.” (Alistair for Hugh). The Leviathan, The Hand, And The Maelstrom – Nathan Witkin – Arachne . “Long-form essay warning: This ‘essay on the new economics of discourse’ has one big conclusion: it’s the internet, stupid. There are just so many good lines in here, stating things we’ve talked about many times in interesting, chewy ways: ‘Platform companies have not only accumulated a vast captive audience for advertisers to pick off, like fish in a barrel. They have also tasked that audience with competing, at their own cost, to produce whichever media most effectively keeps them in that barrel’.” (Alistair for Mitch). Ruled By Numbers: How Data Dominates Every Facet Of Our Daily Lives – Noah Giansiracusa – Lit Hub . “How much do you really want to know about yourself, quantified, especially knowing that every datapoint you see is collected, parsed and processed by some company that may or may not have your best interests at heart.” (Hugh for Alistair).     Possible – Audrey Tang And Divya Siddarth On Outfitting Democracy For The AI Era – Reid Hoffman – LinkedIn . “Imagine if democracy, which feels painfully slow these days, was optimized to move faster than corruption?” (Hugh for Mitch). Last Call Before A.G – Found Footage From The Future – KNGMK – YouTube . “You need to watch this video on two levels: Level One: Pure content, entertainment and insight. It’s biting in a Black Mirror kind of way. Too many current and topical themes to explain. Just worth the watch and share. Level 2: How it’s made. No cast… no crew… just prompts. Sit with this.” (Mitch for Alistair). The Deepest Conversation I’ve Ever Had About Writing – Dana Gioia – How I Write – YouTube . “This is what the Internet was made for. How I Write is one of my favorite shows. I (admittedly) did not know who Dana Gioia is… but I not only made it through this (but truly enjoyed it!). The full three hours plus of this conversation, which is much more of a masterclass than a conversation, is the type of thinking you would hope to get from a writer’s retreat. This has it all: insight, depth, clarity and deep deep learning… just beautiful… I took a ton of notes.” (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on X, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

Before you go… ThinkersOne  is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.

Where AI Ends And Leadership Begins

The white collar worker warning is that AI will replace us.

That the systems we’ve built will scale faster than we can adapt… that code will outpace character.
That the task-based work we do (especially the repeatable stuff) is what AI eats for breakfast

But what if that’s not the real tradeoff?

What if the bigger risk isn’t the machines… but the mindset we carry into this next chapter?
The belief that we must pick between progress and people.
Between automation and emotion.
Between intelligence (of the artificial kind) and wisdom (of the lived kind).

Much of our leadership language still assumes these are opposing forces.

Move fast… or listen deeply.
Deploy AI… or preserve culture.
Get more done… or stay more human.

But maybe that’s the wrong framework entirely.

What if the job isn’t to choose between the two… but to lead both?
To build environments where systems are smart and people are seen (and smart too).
To scale clarity and connection.
To hold space for uncertainty, while still making space for each other to learn and grow and adapt.

We’ve done a lot of work (individually and collectively) learning how to “manage change” (remember that whole pandemic thing?).

Now we’re being asked to re-learn how to manage presence.
To remember that not every meeting should be replaced with a memo… 
To remember that not every Zoom meeting should be replaced with a generative AI summary.
That not every input needs to be optimized.
That not every idea needs to be perfect before it’s voiced.

We need leaders who don’t just automate the right outputs… but cultivate the right conditions for the best inputs.

Leaders who know how to hold the room (even when the screen is blank… or those on the Zoom screen don’t have their cameras on).
Leaders who can hear the quiet hesitation in someone’s voice… and make room for it.
Leaders who understand that productivity might now be measured in prompts and tokens… but still believe in the irreplaceable value of trust and conversation.

The future won’t be led by those who master the machine.

It will be led by those who refuse to forget the human behind the machine… and the humans on the other side of the screen.
That’s the kind of leadership I want to follow.
That’s the kind of leadership I want to practice.

That’s the kind of leadership I want to be around.

(Christie Smith and I wrestled with this on this week’s episode of Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast. She’s the co-author of Essential – How Distributed Teams, Generative AI, And Global Shifts Are Creating A New Human‑Powered Leadership).

Before you go… ThinkersOne is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.

Shel Israel… The Challenger You Always Wanted At The Table

Shel Israel never just joined a conversation… he challenged it.

He wasn’t there to nod along.
He was there to tilt the frame, flip the assumption and make you think harder.
He wrote as an enthusiast. 
He wrote as a journalist. 
He wrote as a teacher. 
He wrote as a thinker. 

We didn’t speak often.

But we were often connected. 
He was one of the earliest guests on my podcast.
And he came back on a handful of times over the years. 
We even managed to debate and discuss during some in-person dinners at some tucked-away spots where the food was good but the conversation was better.
I remember those nights… leaning in over the table, debating the state of tech… the state of the world.

And then there were the countless notes.

Quick lines in my inbox.
A message sent through Facebook.
A push to look at something from a different angle.
A question that unraveled my writing.

He’d challenged me in the moment… and somehow still make me feel like I’d just been handed a gift.

I always pushed that Apple was only going to get stronger after major stumbles in the media.
He always said it was on the edge of collapse after these instances.
I’d always offer to bet him.
Neither of us ever “won” the bets we would keep placing. 
That wasn’t the point.

The point was the push.

The joy of going toe-to-toe with someone who was as curious as he was certain.
Shel saw technology through a human lens.
In his books (Naked Conversations, Age of Context, Lethal Generosity, The Fourth Transformation, Twitterville, etc.) he mapped where the future was headed before most of us could see it.
But he didn’t just predict.
He explained it.

He made complexity feel like a conversation, not a lecture.

I’m going to miss him (and his voice).
Here’s to you, Shel…
For the dinners, the debates, the perspective and the reminder that we don’t grow by also agreeing… we grow by being challenged and questioned.

Enjoy the conversation… wherever you are now.

(the photo above was take in 2012 at one of those dinners. L-R: Scott Monty, Shel Holtz, me and Shel Israel… may your memory be a blessing).

Before you go… ThinkersOne is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.