The Problem Isn't AI - It's What You're Using It For - E64

Speaker A: 23 hundred years ago, a Greek mathematician named Archimedes said something that every leader racing to keep up with A.I. uh, right now has forgotten. He said, give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the world. Sit with that for a second. Now give me a stronger arm, not give me a bigger rock, a lever and a place to stand. Archimedes understood that the power was never in the force. The power was in the leverage and in the hand that decided where to apply it. You are holding the most powerful lever any leader in history has ever held. That is what AI is. But here is the part that almost nobody is saying out loud. Most leaders have grabbed the lever with both hands and started pulling without ever stopping to ask the one question that matters. What am I actually trying to move? So if you feel that you're behind on AI and if it feels like everyone around you has figured something out that you've missed, this episode is for you. Because the thing you are most afraid you are losing is exactly the thing this moment needs the most. Let's get into it. This is leadership unlocked. Let me describe a feeling, and you tell me if you recognize it. If you open up your phone and there's another AI tool that everyone is talking about, you open your inbox, someone forwards you a thread about a platform you just have to try. You open up LinkedIn and there's a post telling you that if you're not using this by now, you're already behind. And underneath all of it, there's a quiet question running in the back of your mind. What am I going to do with my time now? Am I getting left behind? And honestly, I don't even know where to start. So let me name the trap directly. The trap is that we have made this whole moment about the tool. Which tool? Which model? Which plugin? The entire conversation points at the tool, and the tool is the wrong place to start. Most of the money pouring into AI right now is producing nothing. Not because the tools are bad. The tools are extraordinary. Trust me, I'm using them, uh, to the maximum capability. Every day the money disappears because organizations are reaching for the tools before anyone has named the problem the tool is supposed to solve. And the cost shows up in three places in in dollars and subscriptions. You're barely using in your team, who now produces more output faster. That still does not move the thing that matters. And then you, because you start to feel like the problem is that you are not keeping up with, when the real problem is that nobody decided what to Chase in the first place. Here's the permission I want to give you. You are not behind. The whole conversation is aimed at the wrong thing. And you've been feeling that misalignment without being able to name it. That instinct is not a gap in you. That is your judgment working. Let me tell you how I learned that. And it's the embarrassing way I'm going to be honest with you, because I think that honesty is the whole point of this conversation. I have been guilty of exactly what I just described more times than I want to admit. Uh, especially in late 2024 and early, even the mid-2025, when the tools were evolving so fast it felt like the ground was moving every week. And, man, that hasn't slowed down. It still feels that way. I can't tell you how many subscriptions I bought, how many tools I downloaded. Each one was going to solve some neat problem. Each one felt like it might be the one I was looking for, a silver bullet. And you know what I actually built? Bloat. A.I. uh, ballot. I had tools I never opened subscriptions. I forgot I was paying for a whole pile of capability and almost none of it working together, because none of it was pointed at a specific problem that I'd actually, actually defined and zeroed in on as the most important problem to solve with a real roi. And the turn came when I finally slowed down enough to see what I had done. And the realization was almost too simple to admit. The order was backwards. The tool was never step one. Naming the problem was step one. Defining what great looks like was step two. Researching the right solution was step three. And only then learning to use the tool, that was step four. And I've been starting at step four every single time. And I want to be straight with you about where I am right now. I still feel the pull. A new tool drops, and everybody's talking about it, and I feel that old itch to grab it before I've asked myself, what am I actually trying to move. The difference now is that I catch it most, most of the time. But the muscle memory of reaching for the shiny thing is old, and it is strong. And I don't think it ever fully goes away. Here's the discipline that I built out of all that wasted motion. I call it the lever discipline. There's three moves to this, and the whole thing fits in one sentence you can hold in your head. Name the nail, pick the lever, keep your hand on it. Step one is naming that nail, that target you want to hit before you touch a Single tool. You name the one problem that actually matters and you define what great looks like when it is solved. Not a vague direction, not a, oh, by the way, what if we could do this would be really cool. The specific problem and a specific picture of what it looks like when it's solved. You know, Gartner expects 40% of agentic AI projects to be scrapped by 2027. The number one reason is not the technology. I mean technology. The technology is mind blowing. And I'm using agentic processes every single day. The problem is the scope. Uh, teams are reaching for end to end automation before they've solved a single problem. Well, they're swinging for the fences for grand slams instead of focusing on base hits. They picked up the hammer before they named the nail. So our reframe here is we want to name that nail, that target we want to hit before we pick up the hammer. Always component number two, pick the lever, not the shiny object. Only after the nail is named do you ask the tool question. And the question is narrow. One or two tools actually move this specific problem forward faster or in a way that I couldn't do otherwise. That turns the tool from being the main event into what it always should have been. A lever. AI is teaching us to go fast. It rewards speed. We move fast, we stay shallow. And shallow does not create value, no matter how good the tool is. Our, uh, reframe here is that the tool serves the problem, the problem never serves the tool. We don't need tools searching for a problem to solve. We need to find the problem and then choose the tool that we can use as a lever to move us forward. And component number three is we need to keep our hands on the lever. A lever has no judgment, it has no intuition, and it has no taste. It cannot tell you which problem deserves your attention or read the room or connect two things together that don't obviously belong together. That is you. That is the part that only you can bring. The tool got more powerful. That makes the hand on it matter more, not less. So our, uh, reframe here is the lever extends our reach. It doesn't replace our hand. Let's put all three together. Name the nail, pick the lever, keep your hand on it. That's leadership in the age of AI. Uh, it is not less leadership. It is, it is more. The leader who wins in the next decade is not the one with the most tools. It's the one who is the clearest about what they are trying to move. And they are disciplined enough to choose the one or Two levers that actually move it. Here's a real world application. I call this the one page nail. I want you to open a blank page, set a timer for 15 minutes. Do it before your next meeting where someone says, hey, we should try this new tool and try it alone first. And step one, what I want you to do is write down the problem. Set aside five minutes for this. Write down the single most important problem you are trying to solve right now, or the problem that if you solved it would give you back hours every single week. I know in my conversations with incredibly busy CEOs that the most common thing we're talking about is how do I handle my email. How do I get to a place in a space where email is not taking hours of my time every single day? And that's one that we've unlocked. I know I personally check my email once a day now, but it's because I've been able to put a lever in place. So what I want you to do is write down that single most important problem that you were trying to solve or the problem that will give you back literal time in your day. One sentence. If it takes you a paragraph, you haven't found that nail yet. Keep cutting until it is one clear sentence. Don't make it the biggest problem that's going to take 10 years to solve. Make it a real problem. Something that if solved, creates real value. Now what I, uh, want you to do next for step two is define what great looks like. Write down what it will look like when that problem is solved. How will you know? What can you point to and say this is fixed? Be specific enough that someone else can tell when you got there. Step three, list the one or two tools. This is another five minute section now and only. Now write down the one or two tools that actually serve solving this problem, not the tools you're excited about, the ones that move you forward on that specific nail. If a tool doesn't move the nail you just named set it aside, it just doesn't make your list. Hey, Chat GPT Claw. There's amazing things, but what's the underlying tool? I know for me personally it was building my AI chief of staff, a real agentic assistant that I can turn loose on problems. But that was the tool. Once I built it, I had to be careful. I don't turn it loose on everything. I turn it loose on very specific problems like reading my email, surfacing what's most important, helping me respond to the most important things with the human touch at the right time. So do this again and again before your next tool conversation. As you think about this, the purpose of this exercise isn't so that you can choose a tool. The purpose of this exercise was to do three simple things. Number one, define the actual target. Number two, decide what great looks like. Number three, then install the discipline of choosing a tool. Do this. Before you get into any tool conversation, do it again and again, and within a month you'll have a small stack of these pages. That stack becomes a map of your actual priorities, the real problems you need to solve. It's not a drawer full of half used subscriptions. It's a clear record of the problems that matter and the few tools that are earning their place again against them. You do not need to keep up with every tool. You couldn't even if you tried. You don't need to embrace every LinkedIn influencer or every speaker you've heard, or every conference you've gone to where you've said, hey, what if? What if, what if you couldn't do it if you tried? And the trying is what's burning you and everyone else out. What you need to do is keep your hand on the lever, name the problem that actually matters, decide what great looks like, decide what done looks like. Then, and only then, reach for the tools that matter, the ones that move you forward to a real business solution. The race is not to adopt the most tools. The race is to aim for the best, to create the results that matter. AI is the leverage. You, uh, are the hand, and the hand decides which problem the lever moves. That's the power move. Leadership is more important now than it has ever been. And in this next decade, the agentic decade, those leaders who are better at leading, they're going to be the ones who shift the world. Just like Archimedes wrote about 2300 years ago. If this focused message lands for you, here's the one thing that I would ask of you. Reply to the email you got announcing this episode, shoot me a message on LinkedIn or heck, directly email me DustyArcus AI, uh, and tell me the nail that you named this week. Not the tool that you chose, not the bloat of tools that you've got at your disposal. The problem you finally got clear on, the challenge you're trying to overcome. I love responding and learning from leaders about, hey, I got clear on this business problem. Now I know which tools to go search for, and now I know how to go solve my problems. A few weeks back, I, uh, made the case that your leadership matters more in this Era, not less. This episode is that first move of making this clear, of getting very specific. Make that real. If you want a day to day tactical companion, go back to episode 50. And that's an AMA where we work through using AI. Ah, like a team member instead of a search engine. Over the next couple of episodes, I'm going to take this even further. What the lever reveals about your organization the moment you pick it up, and how to run these tools like a team you actually lead. I'm also in the process of putting all of this into a book. Uh, more on that when it's ready. Until then, keep your hand on the lever. I'll see you next week. Hey, before you go, if this episode helped you see leadership differently, I have three personal requests. First, and this is the most important one. Share this with one leader who needs it. Think of someone in your network who's frustrated with their team's execution or is trying to scale their own impact. Copy this episode link right now and text them, hey, I just listened to this episode and I think you'll get real value from it. That simple act of sharing that is servant leadership in action. Second, subscribe to Leadership Unlocked. Whether you're on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast player, just hit subscribe or the follow button. That way you won't miss the next episode and it helps us reach more leaders like you. And third, if you're willing, if this would be a huge help for us, leave a five star rating and write a quick review. I know it takes 60 seconds of your time, but here's what it does. It helps other leaders discover the show. Every rating, every review. It's how we expand our impact together. So those three things. Share with a friend, subscribe, leave a review. I'm deeply appreciative and that would give us so much help. Thanks for being part of the Leadership Unlocked community. Uh, now go create some clarity for others.