Hey Reader,

AI has changed the rules.

The gap between "I have an idea" and "here's the finished output" has collapsed from weeks to minutes. Suddenly, the bottleneck shifts from execution to judgment and storytelling.

These forms of leadership are not just critical at the top of the org. They're needed where the problem or opportunity arises.

That's what this week's edition is all about: leadership as a capability that needs to exist all the way down.

Welcome to the 8th edition of the 3-2-1 (check out previous issues here).

Let's get into it.

3 Things for Work (in L&D)

​High Performers Are Leaving​

• HiPo IC departure intentions jumped from 13% (2020) to 21% (2024) according to the DDI 2025 Global Leadership Forecast. High performers without clear growth opportunities are now 4x more likely to leave than those with development paths. The leadership pipeline is breaking at the IC level.
• 🏃 Effort ≈ 15-20 min PDF read

​The Promise and Peril of Human-Like Artificial Intelligence​

• A compelling case for augmentation over automation. The key insight: "For each dollar spent on machine learning technology, companies may need to spend nine dollars on intangible human capital." But firms underinvest in training due to spillovers, and workers face financing constraints. The takeaway: governments should fund or incentivize training at scale.
• 🏃 Effort ≈ 20 min read

​The Irreplaceable Value of Human Decision-Making ​

• As AI handles execution, human judgment becomes the bottleneck. This HBR article from BCG and Rotman argues that leaders must refine uniquely human strengths: ethics, imagination, and nuanced decision-making to differentiate corporate outcomes.
• 🏃 Effort ≈ 6 min read

2 Things for Life

​The Thinking Game​

• I was glued to this documentary on a recent flight. It follows Demis Hassabis from chess prodigy to DeepMind founder. Watch the origins of the company that cracked protein folding and built AlphaGo, the kind of genius Google couldn't resist acquiring. Relevant context for understanding where AGI ambitions come from.
• 🏃 Effort ≈ 1 hour 30 min watch

​Don't Think of AI as an Entity, Think of It as a Simulator​

• One of AI's best thinkers reframes how we should use AI. This idea confirmed for me the real value of AI as a perspective-shifter. It connects directly to Seek, Sense, Share where we use perspective-shifting as a tool to help people frame a problem. AI excels at giving you different perspectives on the same problem.
• 🏃 Effort ≈ 2 min read

1 Idea from Me

🏃 Effort ≈ 1 min read

A participant in our program was about to start reporting to her COO.

New boss. Big deal. Also, someone she hadn't worked with before.

Her first instinct wasn't to prepare better slides or tighter data.

It was this: "Putting myself in his shoes—what does he need to know?"

That's not communication skills. That's leadership through story.

Let me explain.

The WSJ recently reported that traditional media is collapsing. Brands are becoming their own publishers through social media, YouTube, and Substack, and they’re looking for storytellers.

I don’t believe this shift is reserved for marketing/comms teams. It's a leadership problem all the way down and across the org.

Our participant is a Product Marketing Lead. Not a VP. Not a director. An IC who understands that framing information for her audience and deciding what resonates at the COO level is the work now.

AI can research, draft, analyze, and present an idea end-to-end. What used to require a team of five now requires one person with good judgment.

But AI output is static. Technically correct, but emotionally lifeless.

It doesn't move people. It doesn't frame problems in ways that make action feel inevitable.

Humans do that, through stories.

When AI handles execution, the constraint shifts to who can tell the story that makes the insight land. Who frames the problem so the right people care.

This skill set can be learned. We teach it and our participant proves it (in this case, by using a tool we call perspective-shifting).

The question then is whether your IC development is actively building this skill or treating storytelling as a nice-to-have.

Or said another way:

That's it for this week!

I'll be back in 3 weeks (taking time off to end the year).

Have a very merry holiday with your loved ones ✌️

Andrew

P.S. Planning your 2026 IC programs? I've still got four free 30-minute strategy calls to help L&D leaders think through their approach. 👉 Click here to book your session​

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