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AGI? It depends on your philosophy.

If you believe in determinism, you are likely to believe AGI (Artificial General Intelligence, Superintelligence) is close or already here. Determinism is the philosophy that free will is an illusion and that our choices are predetermined by the conditions and circumstances that precede them. In other words, if you can consider all variables you can build an if-then-else statement large enough that all decisions and behavior can be predicted.

AI’s current primary path is induction logic. It is applying compute to as much data as possible to isolate patterns…building a mega if-then-else statement.

If you do not believe in determinism and believe in free will, then you are less likely to believe that AGI is close. You believe that it is deduction versus induction logic what makes the human mind (sentience) unique.

Deduction logic starts with general premises and seeks to validate those premises via specific circumstances (real world data). In other words, you build a conceptual model based on general observation or just thinking and then prove it is valid by applying it to specific situations. It is the opposite direction of induction.

Today, AI struggles in the realm of deduction. There is a rising question of whether the current architecture (LLM’s, …) can ever be deductive. That is not to say that AGI is impossible. I just wonder if it is possible based on our current technical approach to AI.

I admit this is a very oversimplified view. I have been thinking about it for some time. A growing theme in articles and posts about AI seem to be in alignment with this view. So, I decided to share it more broadly.

What do you think?

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AI versus Reading…

We review a book or paper summary to get the headlines. But, we didn’t actually read it. So, we miss information not included in the headlines that would have had meaning to us. Further, reviewing headlines only partially internalizes the intelligence. Thus, we are less likely to leverage it in our decision making (and thus it is less impactful).

Aren’t many of our use cases for AI essentially asking AI for a summary of summaries? For those use cases, wouldn’t AI be missing key points?

I would suggest that we should ask ourselves when using AI makes sense and when doing the work of reading, thinking, simplifying, and summarizing the headlines ourselves makes sense. What do you think?

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5 Thoughts on AI and Leadership…

What is AI’s impact on leadership?

My initial thought is that your POV on that topic will evolve as AI evolves. The foundation of the POV will likely stay the same (like the foundational principles and methods of leadership that stay consistent over time) but the details/application will change as AI’s integration into our lives deepens. That’s why the title of the article ends with “…” More to come after this article, but here are my current top five thoughts on the topic of AI’s impact on leadership:

Less Technical Skills: Given AI is technology, this seems counter-intuitive. AI’s primary value proposition is automating and speeding up technical tasks (yes, an oversimplification). Thus, your technical skills and experience are less important. The skills pie is good context. It is a useful leadership template (conceptual model) that summarizes skills as technical, conceptual, and interpersonal. Each role and level require a different mix of those skills. For example, a programmer might be 40% technical, 40% conceptual, and 10% interpersonal while a team leader might be 20% technical, 30% conceptual, and 50% interpersonal. In the realm of leadership, the technical slice of the team pie was already small. Now it arguably gets even smaller while the conceptual (which includes creativity) and interpersonal slices get even larger.

AI Agents & Rolled-up Sleeves: If you strive to lead in the midst of the AI revolution, you need to be an active participant. I have always felt that the best functional managers are the ones who stay up-to-date with the methods and technology of their team. For example, when I was a Programming Manger, I still programmed one-third of my time so that I could help members of my team debug code. It was critical in building and deepening my credibility. There is no standing on the sideline with AI. Thankfully, AI agents are making it easy to be hands-on. You just need to be willing to experiment…to play. Of course this means you need to set aside the time. One might object that using AI agents falls into the technical skill bucket. Given the rate of change and the low level of syntax required to use an AI agent, I view it as more closely aligned with conceptual skills.

Distributed Systems Rising: AI’s automation and streamlining is blowing up established processes. The world of standard operating procedures (SOPs) and even consistent operational KPI’s is the world of yesterday. This means rigid operational and organizational structures no longer do the job. I do not think the answer is decentralization (including self-managing teams). There are circumstances that Holocracy-like approaches work great, but in my view it is too dramatic a change for most companies (for example, there are no “leaders” in self-managing teams). Instead, I think distributed systems and teams is the right approach. It is basically 1-2 steps back from decentralization and 2-3 steps forward from rigid structure. It is setting vivid objectives with your teams (leveraging their minds in setting the direction), cascading those vivid objectives (working with individuals to articulate how they can directly impact the bigger picture), and then giving the team wider-than-ever guardrails to work (empowering them to be creative and innovative in building the path to the objectives). A critical guardrail and responsibility of the team leader is to gather feedback from the team, the company, and the market to challenge the current objectives to see if the direction needs to be adjusted. In my view, this approach has always been the right way to lead. AI is making it even more so.

Evolving Value Measurement: As I mentioned just above, legacy KPI’s likely no longer apply. How you measure the value added by your team is changing. Experimentation is more important than ever. Every book on innovation over the last 20 years discussed failing fast and rewarding the lessons of failure. Most companies talked about it, but few actually integrated it into their culture. With the AI revolution, the cost of not building a “test and learn” culture is greater than ever. The same applies to all the work on adapting to change. Change is officially becoming part of our day-to-day. In theory, the legacy productivity metrics of your team should skyrocket. If they do not, your team is not trying hard enough to challenge business-as-usual and break stuff.

Don’t Forget the Team: Availability heuristic keeping AI top-of-mind creates the risk that your team will get less of your time and focus. As someone who strives to lead a team, your team and the members of your team must always be your top priority. It will be tempting to offload too much conceptual work to your AI agents. AI agents are not a substitute for your team’s thinking. Use AI agents to create ideas for discussion with your team but not be the end of the discussion. Again, AI’s noise is and will continue to be a massive distraction from what is most important. Remember you are a servant leader first and an AI architect second. I think each of these five thoughts could be a blog post by themselves. I’m going to keep noodling the topic. What do you think? Do you agree with these five? Is there something I blatantly missed? Am I over-indexing on one of the topics?

Thank you for reading my leadership blog post. I hope you found it interesting and thought provoking.

Check out “Strategic Pause” on Amazon. Follow me on X (@DonThinks).

© 2025 Don Graumann. All Rights Reserved. Other than personal sharing, please do not redistribute without permission.

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If you are focused on “best practices,” you are focused on the wrong thing.

By definition, aren’t best practices methods common across market leaders? So, if everything goes perfectly, you would just pull even.

Instead, your focus should be on differentiation. That is how you gain an advantage and maybe even carve out a little monopoly until others take on your new method as a “best practice.”

If you are not willing to take the risk, then take a “best practice + 1” strategy. Try to improve upon one aspect of the best practice in an attempt to gain an incremental advantage.

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5 Lessons from Writing My Leadership Book

As many of you know, I have begun writing my second leadership book. Before getting started, I reflected on the writing process I used for my first leadership book. In that assessment, I remembered that I drafted a leadership article on this topic shortly after publishing “Strategic Pause”. The 4-year-old draft was consistent with my current assessment. There are five lessons that stand out and have application beyond writing a book to leadership and personal productivity. Here is the leadership article with minor edits.

One of the fundamental concepts in my first leadership book is that leadership is a process and not a destination. Your learning and evolution should be continuous. Here are five lessons learned and/or reinforced from writing “Strategic Pause”:

1) Keep an open mind

When I took my professional pause (2019-2020) to write my book, I could visualize it. My leadership model was 100% set. I had 80% of my outline. I thought that 50% of the actual writing would come from my 70+ leadership blog posts. That’s what I thought.

My leadership book looks considerably different than when I started the writing journey. The increased and dedicated focus drove insight after insight. It would happen while I was writing, in the shower, hiking, walking the doggies, and riding my bike. I found that I could make concepts in my model and book even more explicit and simple. The framework that had not changed for five years was enhanced. The primary principles and methods largely stayed the same but many of the labels did not. Overall, the articulation, organization, and packaging greatly improved.

No matter how good you think something is, it can probably be better. But, that is not possible without keeping an open mind.

2) Passion can’t be forced

I initially approached writing my book like a project. I am at point A, the destination is B, and the steps are 1 through 5. I started with establishing a writing discipline. I had the outline and simply needed to fill it in. I decided I would write at least two hours per day even when I was not feeling it. I forced myself to write. In every single instance, I had to rewrite the sections I forced. If I wasn’t in the flow (or “flow state”), the quality of my writing was simply not worthy of representing my passion.

Establishing a writing discipline does have important benefits. I had a writing discipline for years through tweeting three times a week on leadership and personal productivity and posting an article to my leadership blog (on tumblr and LinkedIn) once a month. By doing this, my writing improved. I began to view myself as a writer. And, I increased the probability that I would get into the flow when I did sit down to write.

However, when it comes to your passion project, your flow may not follow your writing discipline. You simply need to accept that. So, I applied my “10 Minute Rule,” which is in my book, every day. Every day I would try. I would focus for 10 minutes on my book. If I could not get into the flow, I stopped and tried again the next day. Sometimes it took one day or even a week to get back into the flow. My book was 100% written when I was in the flow.

3) Shield the flow from disruption

You need to respect the flow. When you are in it, you need to run with it. Sometimes I sat down to write for an hour and ended up writing for four hours. When you enter that zone, maximize it.

Disruptions, no matter how small, can kill the flow. I had it happen many times. I forgot to turn off my message notifications. I decided to take an incoming call because I thought it would be quick. More often than not, the flow decided that it must be done for the day.

If the task in important, explicitly shield yourself from disruptions. Respect the flow and the results will come faster and be better.

4) Be empowered and leverage crowdsourcing

I consider myself a fairly technical and capable person. When I decided to take the self-publishing route, I figured I could do most of it. This included editing, beta reading/feedback, cover design, and interior formatting. In each of these areas, I had to learn the same lesson.

Yes, I had the technical capabilities to do those things. But, as I went deeper, it was clear that there was way more to each of those areas than I realized. I could quickly acquire the technical skills but not the experience. Eventually, I embraced one of the primary principles in my book.

Empowerment is maximizing your strengths and minimizing your weaknesses. My focus belonged on the concepts, outline, and writing. The editing, cover design, and interior formatting was best left to the professionals. Further, this was very consistent with casting my passion in the best possible light.

In today’s connected world, finding help is easier than ever. I was able to find excellent partners very quickly. It also demonstrated the power of crowdsourcing. I decided to hold a contest on a design website for my cover. For what I consider to be small money, I got over 150 initial design submissions! I ended up picking a designer on the other side of the globe. Amazing.

5) Set expectations farther out when in unfamiliar territory

My experience managing projects and programs was critical in making “Strategic Pause: Stop. Think. Lead.” a reality. However, it took me some time to realize that writing a book is not a linear process like a project. It is an iterative process.

I wanted to hold myself accountable for making progress, so I set expectations that were visible to my network. In working through it, as I hinted above, I consistently underestimated what it would take. As a result, I had to reset expectations on the publish date three times. That was tough for me to take. In the professional world, I took pride in consistently meeting and exceeding expectations.

I underappreciated that I was in very unfamiliar territory. I should have set expectations much farther out. Even better, I should have adopted the approach of sharing hard milestones and leaving the publish date soft.

When you are in unfamiliar territory, initially set expectations farther out than normal. There will be unknowns you have not considered. The worst case is that you can pull in the expectations. That is always better received than pushing expectations out.

Thank you for reading my leadership blog post. I hope you found it interesting and thought provoking.

Check out “Strategic Pause” on Amazon. Follow me on X (@DonThinks).

© 2025 Don Graumann. All Rights Reserved. Other than personal sharing, please do not redistribute without permission.

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The markets reminded me that as long as I have a rational reason for my decisions, I feel better. Even if it does not work out. Reason maximizes the chance of a favorable outcome versus if the decision was based on intuition or emotion.

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Is your approach simplifying or getting more complex?

As you get older, you tend to simplify your approach (values & beliefs, leadership model, personal philosophy, …). When you were younger, you were focused on being comprehensive…even perfect. As you age you better understand when good enough is good enough. You understand and accept that life is filled with tradeoffs. You focus on what gets you 80% there…and then move on to the next priority. That is how you maximize lifelong impact.

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Do you know when to walk away?

This is a difficult question that most people struggle to answer. In the past, I have answered it generally in a few different ways:

I have accomplished as much as I can reasonably accomplish.

The leadership ROI has gotten too low (i.e. too much is required to get things done).

The gap between authority and responsibility has grown too large.

As you can see, there is overlap across those answers. I acknowledge that there are lots of other reasons to step away that are not captured in those answers. I am talking about the situation where corporatism has creeped in too far.

Recently, I was asked the question again in a more specific way. It helped me articulate a better answer that I would like to share. I was asked, “As a servant leader, how can you walk away without feeling like you have abandoned your team?”

Living by Your Leadership Model

If you are a servant leader, you strive to lead in a certain way. You believe that your team is always your #1 priority. How is that manifested?

Ideally, you have articulated your leadership model in explicit and simple terms. As you might know, I strongly believe that those who strive to lead should develop an explicit and simple leadership model (one of the key topics of my book “Strategic Pause”). This leadership model contains your principles and methods of leadership, your leadership OS. They are your leadership “what” and “how”. You can call them your leadership values.

Since your leadership principles and methods are explicitly and simply defined, you are aware when you are not acting in accordance with them. In other words, you know when you are compromising your leadership values.

If you are increasingly required to act outside of your leadership values, you may cross the threshold where you are no longer a servant leader. Remember, you identified those values as requirements for being a servant leader. If you stay and continue to violate those values, you transform from being a servant leader to being part of the problem.

I know that is a pointed statement. I am being somewhat hyperbolic to make the point. If you are not able to lead in the manner that you wish to lead, you might not be in the right environment. It might be time to consider stepping away.

I would like to clarify that the leadership values threshold is a subjective spectrum. No servant leader can live by 100% of their leadership model 100% the time. That utopia does not exist. Instead, the servant leader pragmatically leads by focusing on the principles and/or methods that make the most impact in that particular environment. The question is, how small a leadership impact can you tolerate? Be aware that your rationalization engine might try to get you to accept smaller and smaller impacts.

Focus on the TO not the FROM

The discussion above is what I call the “FROM”. If you cannot lead via your leadership values, then you are not in the right place. However, the next step is not to walk away.

The next step is to define your “TO”. You know it is time to go, but where are you going? Yes, the “FROM” is very frustrating and your decision to leave has been made. Stop rehashing your present situation and work on articulating your desired future situation.

Taking this approach allows you to flip to a positive from a negative perspective. Instead of being frustrated by today, you find yourself getting excited by tomorrow. When you do officially step away, you are happily sharing where you are headed versus why you started looking.

Have you defined your leadership values? Do you have an explicit and simple personal leadership model? Are you aware when you are being asked to violate your model? Do you know when to walk away? Do you know which direction you will be going?

Thank you for reading my leadership blog post. I hope you found it interesting and thought provoking.

Check out “Strategic Pause” on Amazon. Follow me on X (@DonThinks).

© 2025 Don Graumann. All Rights Reserved. Other than personal sharing, please do not redistribute without permission.

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What is your BIOS?

BIOS readies your laptop to be productive when it starts up. What is your BIOS? Do you have startup/morning routines that get you ready to be productive? Or, do you rely on waking up with the right mindset? Part of my BIOS is writing in my journal.

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Don't try to check all the boxes

Stop trying to check all the boxes. Given the info explosion and acceleration of change, isn’t trying to get everything done more unrealistic than ever? Instead, check the most important boxes and leave the rest for later or not at all.

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Think Outside the Box and Work Inside a Box

Think Outside the Box

Unless you have been living under a rock, you know about “think outside the box.” There is no shortage of articles and books written about the topic (i.e. continuous improvement, innovation). Here is a quick refresher.

“Think Outside the Box” is challenging business-as-usual (BAU). It is considering and choosing new paths that are more aligned to the big picture (more effective and/or efficient). A few best practices for “think outside the box” are:

New Perspectives: This is explicitly seeking feedback from new sources. This ranges from giving a voice to a team member who has not normally been asked for feedback to soliciting perspectives from outside of your team, company, or industry.

Challenge Assumptions: Identify and remove assumptions when brainstorming. Assumptions can be explicit and seen or implicit and unspoken. Even though the assumptions might be immovable obstacles, visualizing how things would look without them will generate interesting ideas. In my experience, in this process you come to believe that maybe the insurmountable challenge is not as big a constraint as you think.

Be a Positive Force: When you are negative, you are less likely to see possibilities. Tomorrow is just going to be the “same old same old.” When you are positive, you believe things can get better. Tomorrow has the possibility to be better based on your actions today.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. Let’s move to the second topic, which is my primary reason for writing this post.

Work Inside a Box

You have already applied “think outside the box” to plot the path forward. Now it is time to put your plan into action. When doing that, it is often helpful to “work inside a box.” Wait, am I saying you should put constraints on yourself? Yes.

You have a task in front of you. It might be standalone, or it might be a task broken out from a larger project. Allocate the amount of time that you are 80% confident you can complete the task. This is my version of timeboxing. Here are a few of the advantages:

Force Priority: Knowing how much time you are allocating to the task allows you to prioritize it relative to everything else in your work queue for the day. Since you can schedule that time, your calendar does not have the fuzzy edges of an open-ended task.

Make Progress: You might not finish the task in the allotted time. Remember, it was an 80% confidence time estimate. But, you will absolutely make progress. Without a timebox, it is easy to procrastinate the open-ended task.

Know When Good Enough is Good Enough: Is the goal to accomplish the task or achieve perfection? Too often in my past, I have continued to work on a task well beyond the point of diminishing returns. I was chasing perfection. However, perfection is rarely needed to accomplish the task. When incremental time would be better applied to other activities, you are done. Learning to work in a timebox means you know when good enough is good enough.

If you timebox, you will find that you box (fight with) time much less frequently. Sorry, that was driven by my penchant for dad jokes.

Know when you and your team are thinking and when you are working. How you structure your time for each type of activity is quite different. So, do you think outside the box and work inside a box?

Thank you for reading my leadership blog post. I hope you found it interesting and thought provoking.

Check out “Strategic Pause” on Amazon. Follow me on X (@DonThinks).

© 2025 Don Graumann. All Rights Reserved. Other than personal sharing, please do not redistribute without permission.

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Before you make a point that is very important to you, ask yourself if the audience is ready to hear it. If they are not, the value of the POV as well as your credibility will take a hit. Hold off until they are ready.

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Your calendar, email, and messaging are full. Are they keeping you busy or are you making true progress? Are you properly assessing alignment to the real priorities on a regular basis?

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When someone shares a meaningful story, resist sharing a similar story…even if your intent is to show interest. It is perceived as you trying to shift the focus to yourself. Instead, show you care by expressing enthusiasm and asking questions.

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The Leadership Learning Ladder

How Learning Leadership Differs

Learning leadership is not like learning most other skills. It is different in a couple of ways:

Leadership is a process, not a destination: Taking a class or earning a certification or degree does not make you a leader. Those things can certainly help but, earning credibility from those around you, especially those on your team, makes you a leader. In that evolution, you quickly see how a leader is always listening for feedback and striving to improve as a leader. You never “arrive” as you are always learning and growing.

Leadership should be in your own words: Everyone has their favorite leadership best practices. No doubt that they can be useful. But, if you take them on face value (literally), you will be leveraging someone else’s words and thinking. You can do better than that. If you think they are valuable, put the best practices in your own words. Make them your own, your own thinking. It is very unlikely that the person who shared the best practices developed them entirely on their own. They are either passing them along verbatim or in their words. Put them in your own words.

The Leadership Learning Ladder

Leadership best practices can be conveyed via multiple methods. Each has a different level of effectiveness. I refer to each method as rungs on the leadership leading latter. If you climb higher on the ladder, you will learn more and evolve into a better and better leader. Here are the four rungs:

Sharing: This is “Look at this leadership smart thought.” Your LinkedIn feed is filled with them. It is things like “Empathy is the greatest strength of a leader.” Lots of these are what I would call leadership templates. They are mental models (conceptual frameworks) that help you assess the situation and choose the best response.

Teaching: This is the next level of sharing. If the concept is being taught, it is likely more complicated than a few sentences. It goes beyond sharing because it is interactive. You can ask questions to confirm or deepen your understanding. Teaching is “This is what you do.”

Coaching/Mentoring: This is taking teaching to the next level. Instead of being specific, it is focused on general concepts and how they could be applied to varied specific circumstances. Coaching/mentoring is “This is how you do this. This is where you start. Give it a try.” For the sake of simplicity, I am including mentoring with coaching. Mentoring the next level of coaching where you have a deeper ongoing relationship where you delve deeper into your developing leadership approach. Coaching tends to be more transactional and less wholistic by covering topics such as conflict management, personal organization, and setting goals. Mentoring is more focused on you, the leader as a person with your unique strengths and weaknesses.

Servant Leading: This is taking coaching/mentoring to the next level by adding a direct and ongoing connection to a role model. Not only are you learning from what the coach/mentor is covering, you are learning by watching what they do. Due to the direct relationship, you have real-time access to leadership challenges and how the servant leader considers alternatives and chooses the path forward.

In your leadership journey, you will stand on the different rungs of the leadership learning ladder at various times and different circumstances. Hopefully, you will experience the top rung of having a leadership coach/mentor who is your manager and a servant leader.

Build a Personal Leadership Model

As you take in more and more leadership advice, you will find that you start to internalize the learnings differently and more deeply. You started by collecting leadership best practices and rephrasing them in your own words (creating leadership templates, conceptual frameworks). As you evolve, you will see overlap across the concepts. You determine if you already heard the lesson or if it is new. Instead of collecting duplicates, you pivot to building your own personal leadership model. You flip from striving to pull and apply the right leadership template from your inventory to the situation at hand to living by your leadership code comprised of leadership principles and methods that resonated the most with you.

This, building a personal leadership model, is a primary focus of my leadership book, “Strategic Pause: Stop. Think. Lead.” Check it out!

Questions

Which rung of the leadership learning ladder are you usually standing on? Which rung do you stand on in front of your team? Are you striving to climb the ladder and be the best leader you can be?

Thank you for reading my leadership blog post. I hope you found it interesting and thought provoking.

Check out “Strategic Pause” on Amazon. Follow me on Twitter (@DonThinks).

© 2025 Don Graumann. All Rights Reserved. Other than personal sharing, please do not redistribute without permission.

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Is posting leadership best practices LinkedIn’s version of virtue signaling? I think the line is if the content is common sense (e.g. “Empathy is critical to true leadership!”) or if it is interesting and thought provoking (i.e. Maybe this post?). What do you think?

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We are just scratching the surface of AI-driven productivity gains. As a result, is offshoring offshoring less relevant? Would your efforts yield more focused on agentic AI or offshoring? Can you blend both or should you be focused on one?