Alright, let’s talk AI.
Everyone swears we are in the middle of a productivity revolution. Every product is smarter. Every workflow is automated. Every roadmap promises leverage.
And yet, outcomes are not improving. Pipelines are not cleaner. Teams are not calmer. We mostly just added more stuff and called it strategy.
We are still selling magic while pretending it is maturity. We are optimizing motion instead of ownership.
One small signal keeps jumping out at me…
Still Selling Magic?
Why do we use the ✨ sparkle icon?
You see it everywhere in AI products.
Search? ✨ Write something? ✨ Summarize a call? ✨
Do I like it? Honestly, no.
It’s lazy. It takes wildly different behaviors, writing, images, analysis, automation, and collapses them into one visual shrug.
When software is mature, it gets boring. Databases don’t sparkle. Payroll doesn’t sparkle. Anything that actually runs the business does not need magic branding.
That’s where AI still is. We are selling possibility instead of owning outcomes.
AI is very good at replacing motion.
Drafting.
Summarizing.
Clicking.
Logging activity.
What it does not replace is responsibility.
Until teams design around results instead of activity, the tools will not save them. AI will just create faster motion with the same results. Sometimes worse ones.
This is something I am spending a lot of time thinking about. What does it actually look like to own an outcome, not just automate activity?
If you are experimenting with AI in sales or GTM and feeling this tension, I would love to hear how you are approaching it. Just reply to this email or hit me on LinkedIn.
That’s it for today. Connect with me on Linkedin if you actually want to understand what an Autonomous Organization looks like in the real world.
