November 10, 2025 • 60 mins
What if the habits that built last century’s companies are the very things holding yours back today? Dr. John Dentico joins us to challenge the factory-floor model of leadership and swap control for something bolder: a system built on doubt, collaboration, and meaning. We dig into why AI doesn’t just speed things up—it exposes brittle hierarchies and demands a new operating system where influence is shared, trust is the fuel, and execution is tied to clear strategy.
John breaks down his Throttle Up Leadership Operating System into four practical pillars—mission, strategy, planning, execution—and shows how to compress a page-long mission into a sentence that actually guides decisions. We explore strategic thinking versus strategic planning, and how asking sharper questions prevents the “noise before defeat” that comes from chasing AI tactics without a north star. You’ll hear concrete workflows for augmenting creativity with multiple AI models, editing for voice, and being transparent about when generative tools are in the mix. We also talk about avatars, authenticity, and why people still want to connect with a real human even as synthetic media gets better.
Looking ahead, John frames a powerful shift: AI will soon be the constant, and humans the differentiating variable. That future favors leaders who scale trust, embed authenticity and empathy as shared values, and create environments where people contribute to real problems. Forget the lone Jedi CEO—think Yoda as teacher and catalyst. If you lead teams, shape culture, or set strategy, this conversation offers a blueprint to build an AI-augmented organization that learns faster, decides smarter, and sustains meaning at speed.
If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a leader who needs a new playbook, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway so we can keep raising the bar together.
Want to join a community of AI learners and enthusiasts? AI Ready RVA is leading the conversation and is rapidly rising as a hub for AI in the Richmond Region. Become a member and support our AI literacy initiatives.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Welcome back to Inspire AI, the podcast where we
explore how artificialintelligence is transforming the
way we live, lead, and learn.
Today's episode dives deep intoone of the biggest challenges of
our time (00:13):
how to lead in a world moving faster than ever before.
Think about it, most leadershipmodels we still use today were
designed for the factory floor,built for control, efficiency,
and predictability.
But AI doesn't play by thoserules.
It's accelerating change,amplifying complexity, forcing
(00:34):
leaders to rethink what itreally means to lead humans in
the age of machines.
Our guest today has been waiting30 years for this moment.
Dr.
John Dentico is the leadershipstrategist, author of Throttle
Up, How to Accelerate the Impactof 21st Century Leadership,
(00:55):
creator of the T-SwitchStrategic Thinking Method and
the Lead SIM Leadership ImpactSimulation Method, and host of
the Throttle Up LeadershipPodcast, currently ranked number
three on Matchmaker.fm, anonline platform that connects
podcasters with potentialguests.
His work centers on what hecalls the Throttle Up Leadership
(01:17):
Operating System, a new modelfor thriving amid speed,
complexity, and change.
John, welcome to Inspire AI.
It's great to have you here.
So you've been writing andthinking about leadership for
decades.
Do you see this as a suddendisruption, or is AI simply
(01:40):
amplifying something that's beenbuilding for years?
SPEAKER_00 (01:43):
Well, I think what AI is doing is pulling back the
curtain on leadership modelsthat are no longer relevant to
the world that we live in rightnow.
I mean, I was there at thebeginning, I'd like to say, when
the computer, when computerswere just coming online, uh,
when browsers were just comingonline.
(02:04):
Uh I can remember, quitefrankly, when I left active duty
in the Navy sitting in an officewhere uh talking to a gentleman,
and behind him sat a computer,but we didn't call them
computers then.
We called them terminals.
And on that terminal wasMillnet, which now, which later
(02:25):
became the internet.
So what AI is doing, this rapidadvancement is it's it's
basically pulled back thecurtain on why the the models of
leadership that no longer work.
And I mean, here's a data point.
30, about 30 to 30, 32 to 33percent of people in the
(02:50):
workforce in the United Statestoday are engaged in their work,
which means 70% are somewhatengaged or not engaged at all.
Just that one little statisticwould tell you that the
leadership models have failed orare failing.
And um, the time has come, andAI is proving it to us every day
(03:13):
that we change our perspectiveon what leadership is in this AI
world.
SPEAKER_01 (03:21):
So just generally referencing your data point
there, you're saying that theengagement of the workforce is
directly impacted by theleadership uh model of today.
Because you said that 70% of theworkforce isn't engaged, and
that is a direct result of poorleadership or outdated
(03:44):
leadership.
SPEAKER_00 (03:45):
Outdated leadership, uh, an outdated leadership
amount.
In fact, 17% of the people thatwere surveyed say they are
actively disengaged.
And this comes from a Gallup uhpoll taken in mid-2025, long
after COVID uh ended.
unknown (04:03):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (04:04):
Well, thank you for grounding us on that.
Um, I understand that you'vesaid the 1950s factory floor
model of leadership is finallybeing shredded by the speed of
change.
So can you unpack that model,what it looked like, and why
it's no longer working for us?
SPEAKER_00 (04:21):
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, first you have to go backa little bit to the history.
I mean, if you look at 1950, itwas right after World War II.
Okay.
Every country had beendevastated by the war.
Uh we flooded the Roar RiverValley, uh, German uh German
(04:41):
industry was completely done.
Uh uh we had dropped two nuclearweapons on Japan.
So, so anything we made, whenwhen we shifted from a wartime
footing to a peacetime footing,and we stopped making combat
aircraft and ships and startedmaking refrigerators, uh trucks,
(05:02):
and uh washing machines.
Uh uh, anything we sold,anything we made, we sold.
The world just bought it.
Anything we made, we soldbecause there was such a uh a
desperate hunger for anything.
And that's when the leadershipmodels grew up.
That's where they started in the50s, and they've continued on
(05:26):
today.
And the difference, quitefrankly, is this in the
traditional leadership models,leadership is attributed to one
person, the leader.
It's the leader who bestows orgives us leadership.
As opposed to the models todaywhere we see leadership more
(05:47):
about an influence relationshipwhere people, where anyone can
have influence in the dynamic.
So that's a very, very bigdifference when you look at how
leadership was created or lookedat from a psychological, you
know, if we make better leaders,we'll get better leadership.
(06:11):
Well, maybe not.
Maybe there's more to the puzzlethan than just making better
leaders.
So that's that's kind of the wayI see it in terms of the uh
1950s model.
SPEAKER_01 (06:24):
And can you talk a little bit more about why it no
longer works?
SPEAKER_00 (06:29):
It no longer works because, especially in the world
of AI, because now, okay, thethe old 1950s model hinged on
the fact that the leader of theorganization had the knowledge
and the information in order tomake decisions.
It was the leaders told us whatwe needed to do, and people
(06:52):
complied.
Okay, that's kind of the way itwas, and still remains a lot of
today.
But now it's a different story.
Now you have in an organization26 or 27-year-old people who
have access to a number ofdifferent artificial
intelligence tools, for example,engines, who now have the
(07:15):
information and knowledge attheir fingertips.
So the CEO no longer, or thesenior leaders in the
organization, no longer have agrip on that information and
knowledge.
So the question becomes, andagain, if we move to this idea
of leadership as an influencerelationship, which is what I
believe in, and anybody can haveinfluence, then the question is
(07:38):
how do you use those resourcesat your disposal, the people
with all this tremendouscapability at hand in order to
uh move your organizationforward to help solve the
problems or, in a sense, lookinto the future.
SPEAKER_01 (07:53):
Fascinating.
Thank you.
So if control and predictabilityused to define leadership, what
replaces those values now?
You mentioned things likeinfluence and definitely the
vast amounts of knowledge.
SPEAKER_00 (08:06):
Right.
Well, here comes the shocker.
Okay.
Today, organizations need toembrace doubt and ambiguity.
Those are the two things thatreplace predictability and
control.
Doubt and ambiguity.
But here's the beauty of that.
When doubt and ambiguityprevails in the decision-making
(08:29):
environment, it naturally kicksthe door open to collaboration.
Why?
Well, because people don't know.
And you have to invite otherpeople into the decisional
dynamic.
And it really, it really givesyou the true opportunity to
collaborate.
And right now, the world is,especially the AI world, with
(08:54):
all the hype and all the newsthat breaks seemingly every day.
We are in the middle of a doubtand ambiguity complex that's
beyond explanation in manyrespects.
SPEAKER_01 (09:08):
Yeah.
Doubt and ambiguity.
Yeah, I I think about all of thewonderful collaboration sessions
I get to, I'm privy to at work.
And I feel like that's that'spretty spot on.
Um you find a problem to solveand you have no idea how to
solve it, and you can't solve iton your own.
So you invite the workforce tohelp you.
SPEAKER_00 (09:30):
And that's where, for my for my money, that's
where the greatest, the singlegreatest motivation force on the
planet, meaning, starts to takehold.
There's nothing that compares tomeaning as a motivation force.
So when people are fullyinvolved in the decisional
processes, they derive a senseof meaning from that.
(09:53):
They make a difference, theirwork makes a difference.
So that's it, may look likecollaboration, you know, in
front of you, but there's a lotof a lot of other deep things
that are going on.
And for me, meaning now isreally the fundamental uh glue
(10:15):
that organizations need topursue in their leadership
practices.
The question, how do we createan environment where people come
to do their best work?
How do we create an environmentwhere people gain a sense of
meaning from the things thatthey do every single day?
That is a mindset shift from theold traditional models, just
(10:36):
follow our orders, we'll takecare of you, to now you're fully
involved in where thisorganization goes.
SPEAKER_01 (10:44):
Amazing.
I intuitively feel I knowexactly what you're talking
about.
I think deeply about thesethings at in my office all the
time.
Try to keep associates engaged.
And meaning is the one thingthat attracts me most to the
work in and of itself.
Just to even want to supportothers and in their growth and
(11:05):
aspirations, that's meaning forme.
And helping others find meaningin in their work, I think, is
one of my strongest sense ofpurposes as a leader in my
organization.
I love the things you're sayinghere, is really what I'm getting
to.
SPEAKER_00 (11:21):
I'll give you another, I'll give you another
metaphor if you'd like.
Yeah.
You know, in the traditionalmodels, the 1950s models, we
raised, and I've been talkingabout this a lot in my own
podcast, but we raised ageneration of Jedi Knight.
We raised a generation of JediKnights with the expressed idea
of them, of the CEOs, the seniorleaders, brandishing their light
(11:44):
swords, if you will, and and uhdriving away and vanquishing the
problems and issues of theorganization.
So they were the criticalactors, they were the sole
actors, if you will, of theorganization.
But when you create meaning,part of creating meaning is for
CEOs now to see themselves morelike Yoda, the teacher, the
(12:11):
facilitator, the person whobrings people together and says,
How can we go together to solvethese problems?
Okay, the leadership model Istarted developing over 30 years
ago has one basic intrinsicfoundation, and that is
contribution.
(12:33):
Contribution is the is the isthe bottom line of my leadership
model.
Here's a problem, here's anissue, who has an idea who can
help us, who can take us downthe road?
Well, let's just put it all onthe table and see where it takes
us.
So that to me, again, is theshift in mindset from leadership
(12:55):
by one person to leadershipscaled in the ability of a
group, now AI augmented, to helppush the organization or bring
the organization forward.
SPEAKER_01 (13:10):
Lovely.
I think we're getting into it,but I want to talk more about
the system, the throttled upleadership operating system.
What exactly is throttled upoperating system and what
inspired you to create it?
SPEAKER_00 (13:23):
Well, um, we've already touched on some of those
things.
I mean, I was part of a groupagain, 30 years ago, over 30
years ago now, that saw thedistribution of information and
knowledge into the hands of themasses.
That's what we saw.
That's what has happened.
And some of us looked at it andsaid, you know, if this thing
(13:45):
continues to go like it's going,the the whole the whole impetus
behind leadership is going tochange because now you have
knowledge and information in thehands of many people.
So my work in in leadership hasalways been focused on that
idea.
Eventually, and I guess today isthe day, or the the the
(14:07):
leadership perspective has tochange.
It has to change becauseknowledge and information will
be in the hands of people.
Okay, so uh I see leadership asa system, a process, leadership
is a process, it's not somethingrelegated to one individual.
Okay, I make a differentiation.
Let me just back up just for asecond.
95% of all the leadershiptraining that goes on today is
(14:32):
all about is called the I callit the human development side of
the leadership equation.
So what we try to do is we wewe're looking to impart into
people certain ideas andthoughts.
We're looking for great leadersand traits.
(14:53):
Okay.
What are their traits?
Do they have the right the rightamount of charisma?
Do they have all these differentkinds of things?
Okay, because again, leadershipresides in that one individual,
the leader, which by the way, isnot scalable.
Okay, one person is notscalable.
(15:13):
So so that is the humandevelopment side of leadership,
okay.
And that's where most eventoday, I mean, I've interviewed
over a hundred people on mypodcast, and and the same themes
keep coming out.
You know, it's all about thisone, it's all about leadership
as a human development thing.
Okay.
(15:34):
I make a differentiation, Idon't call that leadership
development, I call it leaderdevelopment.
It's leader development, okay?
And that's okay, it's all right,but what we forget is the
conversion factor.
Okay.
So what does that mean?
Well, that means that can thatperson who we've put so much
(15:58):
leaders leader training intoconvert that knowledge into
action?
Can they do something with thatknowledge?
Okay, it's like a golfer, okay?
We can send them all the booksand videos of how to play golf,
and but can they drive the balldown the middle of the fairway
(16:18):
320 yards?
Well, that's the conversionfactor.
So the question is, can they doleadership?
So the differentiation is whileI while I say this is leader
development, for me, leadershipis practice and action.
Okay, that's the shippy part ofleadership, is putting
(16:40):
leadership into action.
Okay, so the throttle up OS isbased on creating an environment
and creating a way thatleadership as a process, as a
system, can be put into anorganization and and help that
(17:04):
organization thrive.
There are four basic pillars,and I'll just explain what the
pillars are to throttle up OS.
First, mission.
You have to have a mission, aclearly defined mission, a
one-sentence mission.
I mean, last year I was workingwith a company that had a
mission statement that was apage long.
(17:24):
And I worked with them.
I did a strategic thinkingsession with them.
A page was one, it was one pagelong.
We got it down to like ninewords.
I had it down to about 15 or 18words.
And during the session, at theend of the session, the people
from the company said, Let'swork on the mission statement.
I said, Okay, so now it's downto about seven or eight words.
Very clear, very succinct,beautiful, crystal clear.
(17:49):
You have to have a mission.
The second piece is strategy.
Okay, now you have this mission.
What is the strategy to carryout the mission?
Too often, and that is based onstrategic thinking, not
strategic planning.
Because normally what happens ispeople go from a mission to
strategic planning, they go tothe plans and they skip the
thinking part of it.
(18:11):
And there is a differencebetween strategic thinking and
strategic planning.
And quickly, it's this strategicplanning looks to find answers
to questions normally given tous by the senior leaders in the
organization.
Strategic thinking is all aboutasking the right questions.
Making sure you're asking theright questions.
(18:32):
The halls of business are linedwith the empty carcasses of
organizations and businesses whonever asked themselves the right
questions.
They didn't even want to knowwhat the right questions are.
They just went right to theplans and the tactics, and they
just kept doing and doing,doing.
So that's the second, that's avol, that's a vital piece.
(18:53):
From that, you can take what youget out of a strategic thinking
session, and then you go tostrategic planning.
Then there comes the plans.
Okay, this is what we said weneeded to do.
This is one of the issues wehave to deal with.
Okay, here, let's give it to thestrategic planners.
Let's figure out now how we'regoing to solve this problem,
where we're going to spendmoney.
(19:14):
How are we going to spend money?
Where we're going to spend it inorder to deal with this real
problem that we see is facingthem.
And then the third part, and thefourth part, excuse me, is
execution.
Okay, so now here's the money.
What are we going to do?
Is it, do we institute atraining program?
Do we institute across-functional team training
(19:34):
program?
Uh, do we buy new technology?
Okay, what is that technologygot to look like?
So those are the foundationalpieces of the throttled up OS.
And again, it's based onleadership as an influence
relationship.
Leadership's a system.
This we put the system intoplace, and if we do it right,
the system will help theorganization take care of
(19:55):
itself.
So that's kind of where that'sthat is where where my thinking
is right now.
SPEAKER_01 (20:04):
Such a well-refined process.
It it sounds like it it can beapplied anywhere.
And you know, you've you'veworked for decades on it, so I I
I wouldn't imagine anythingless, but uh it's very appealing
to listen to you speak sosuccinctly about that um
operating system.
And uh it just you know it drewme in for it could have been an
(20:27):
hour.
I I I don't know what what itwas, but I I just felt so
connected to everything you weresaying.
SPEAKER_00 (20:33):
Um yeah, and and oftentimes what happens is
people go from from uh frommission statements to to plans,
yeah, and they forget about thethinking.
So what they, you know, becausehere's the thing, and I'm all in
favor.
I'm here to protect CEOs ofcompanies.
I'm here to protect them, I'mhere to take care of them.
Okay, not not to push them asideat all.
(20:56):
But it was we both know.
The larger the organizationgrows, especially organizations
still enraptured with thebureaucratic mindset, the
bureaucratic uh organization,and uh the that that
organization speaks to us, ittalks to us through the
organization chart, right?
(21:16):
The organization chart is thelanguage of bureaucracy.
So what happens many times isthere are things buried many
times by people inside thebureaucratic organization that
they don't want to bring to thesurface.
They would rather not sayanything about it because maybe
(21:37):
they feel uh challenged by it,or they may they think the
senior leaders in theorganization may think them
incompetent or uncapable of orincapable of taking things in
their own hands and doingsomething with it.
So what we want to do instrategic thinking is unearth
(21:59):
those in a non-threatening way.
Believe me, it's non-threateningway where we say, hey, here's
the issues, here's the problems.
Where you know, what are we whatare we gonna do?
I mean, not what are we gonnado, but here's the things you
really need to work on.
These are the things that aregonna derail your company.
So now let's take that to plansand then let's go spend money on
(22:20):
that.
SPEAKER_01 (22:21):
That's beautiful.
Yeah, so there's a quote herethat you like to use from Sun
Tzu.
It's tactics without strategy isthe noise before defeat.
So, how does that idea relate tothe way leaders are adopting AI
today?
SPEAKER_00 (22:39):
Well, uh boy, that's that's a heavy question.
Um, I think I think I touchedupon that just previously.
I think I see a lot of AItactics.
Everybody trying to sell theirwares, everybody talking about
this is what we're going to beable to do.
So here's here's the thing thatI see.
(23:00):
What I see in AI is thateverybody is going to the
tactics.
And part of the tactics, part ofwhat AI is presenting to people
is efficiency, cost cutting andefficiency by, in a sense, oh,
we're going to eliminate allthese jobs, and therefore the
(23:21):
companies themselves will bemore efficient and uh and be
make better profit.
But Darren Aeson Maglu, who isthe Nobel Prize-winning MIT
economist, says not so fast.
He estimates that only fivepercent of um jobs in certain
(23:49):
specific areas will beeliminated in the next 10 years.
One of the things that he pointsout, and this is very
interesting, is that AI isportraying itself as an
efficiency cost-cutting toolwhere people will replace.
And what he's saying, and what Iabsolutely believe in, I'll just
(24:11):
say that personally, is that wehave to create the AI tools to
be augmentation to the human inan organization.
That to me is really it's theway I use it.
And and I think that that'swhere it will settle out.
I can tell you, honestly, andI've been doing some research in
(24:32):
this, and it was this actuallycame from a webinar I did a
couple of weeks ago where I hadthe opportunity before we began
the webinar to talk to the womanwho was in charge of the
training, that people are nowsuffering a tremendous amount of
AI fatigue.
I feel it.
SPEAKER_01 (24:49):
Say more.
SPEAKER_00 (24:51):
Well, we're so overwhelming people with the
prospect of AI.
We see Chat GPT, uh, you know,Sam Altman, and we see Darien,
Darien Amadai from Perplexity,and uh Jensen Wong talking about
all these amazing things thatare going to happen with AI.
(25:14):
You know, the hype behind it isis unbelievable.
It's it's creating quite thebubble.
Yeah, it's creating quite thebubble, and no one knows where
it's going to settle out.
I believe I'm saying the truthhere.
I believe Sam Altman saidrecently that we are in a
bubble.
And people are looking at itgoing, okay, so we're we're
(25:39):
waiting for it to burst.
But this is the thing.
The level of investment in AIright now is staggering.
SPEAKER_01 (25:48):
In the trillions.
SPEAKER_00 (25:49):
In the trillions.
I'll give you an example, youknow, and I'll give you an
example.
I mean, I think it's it's Ithink the last time I looked,
Claude was valued somewhere inthe neighborhood of 250 to 300
billion dollars.
Okay, okay, and Dario Amadi saidto train the next generation of
(26:15):
Claude will take$100 billion.
That's a lot of money.
But here's the thing that noone's looking at.
You know, one of the fat one ofthe players that is in the
background, and that is SaudiArabia.
Saudi Arabia has a fund called aPIF fund.
In that fund, it's over 900billion dollars.
(26:37):
They made a uh they created aplan called Vision 2030 in 2016,
where they're moving away fromoil and going to create a tech
center in Riyadh.
Tomorrow morning they coulddecide to get up and buy the
clock.
And they would have anincredible capability at their
(26:59):
fingertips and in a sense beimmediately recognized as a as a
leading tech center in theworld.
SPEAKER_01 (27:07):
So they already have an infrastructure built for
this, is what they've beenplanning for.
SPEAKER_00 (27:12):
They're building a city.
A tech center city near, I thinkin and around Riyadh, to to
house all this capability oncethey bring it online.
SPEAKER_01 (27:27):
So it's very Isn't that just exacerbate the bubble?
SPEAKER_00 (27:31):
Yeah.
I think it I think I think whatit does is it's it says that the
sh there's a shift going on.
Okay, and here's part of theshift.
A few weeks ago, I interviewed aventure capitalist who told me
(27:52):
uh resides in New York, isinvolved in AI, and said, I I
doubt very seriously whether ornot we're going to have another
big player like ChatGPT orClaude or DeGemini or Meta,
whomever, enter the marketplace.
What we kind of see, we what wehave right now is what we have
(28:14):
because it takes a tremendousamount of money, it takes data,
it takes cooling, it takesenergy in order to run these uh
uh in order to run these places,um the data centers.
Uh so what he's shifting his AIto now is applications.
People that are buildingapplications on top of one or on
(28:38):
top of one specific engine.
That's where he sees his moneygoing.
But the question is As long asthey're profitable.
As long as they're profitable,and right now, I don't think any
of them are profitable.
I think they're caught up in theuh Amazon mindset, right?
We can lose money for 10 yearsand then we'll hit it big.
(28:59):
I'm not sure that's gonnahappen.
I'm not sure investors will waitthat long until the money starts
coming back the other way.
I'm not sure, to be honest aboutit.
SPEAKER_01 (29:11):
You turn investing.
Yeah, I was reading an articleabout that this morning.
It's an interesting time andspace we're in, that's for sure.
I would love to keep digginginto this bubble, but we've we
have several other questions Iwant to move through.
SPEAKER_02 (29:27):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (29:27):
So you mentioned that there's you're you you're
you're starting to use multipleAI systems as checks and
balances, kind of meaning likeyou're cross-checking what you
know, figuring out which oneswork gonna work best for this,
that, or the other strategy thatyou have.
Can you share how you actuallyuse AI in your workflow and and
how you ensure it enhancesrather than replaces your
(29:50):
creativity?
SPEAKER_00 (29:52):
Absolutely.
Uh, I can give you a couple ofexamples.
Uh two a c about two weeks ago,I wrote a newsletter uh on to my
LinkedIn feed.
And the newsletter, theorientation of the newsletter
was in response to watching allthe tech layoffs.
(30:13):
All these, I think, over 300,000tech layoffs in the last uh
year.
And I started thinking about,okay, so how do you respond to
this?
I've seen this year in and yearout with different different uh
industries.
You know, we we hire real quickand then we fire even faster.
Okay.
So how do people respond tothat?
(30:35):
What what what can we do?
What can they do that may uhnullify this the the the effect
on them?
So I started thinking about, forwhatever reason, whales.
I started thinking about killerwhales.
I don't know how that thoughtcame into my head, but it did.
(30:55):
And how they act in a pod.
Right?
They they go they they swimtogether, they work together,
they fish together, they takecare of each other, they're a
pod.
So I said, well, that's aninteresting idea.
Let me see what I can do withthat.
Now I had no other inclinationwhatsoever to so I started
(31:16):
feeding that idea into Chat GPT.
And uh because I was looking fora way to help people respond to
these layoffs.
So I started feeding that intoChat GPT.
I'll tell you exactly this thisis the way I did it.
I fed that into Chat GPT.
Chat GPT has I have asubscription, I have the switch
(31:39):
that says share this with therest of uh ChatGPT turned off.
So I've created a wall and ithas my book, it has documents
I've written, it hastranscription files from a
number of different podcastsI've done.
So I've kind of got thatorganized in there, and I fed
that into ChatGPT, so ChatGPThas a real good sense of my
(32:00):
voice and and uh you know what Istand for and what I do.
And I fed the just a basic idea,you know.
This is this is a response tothat, to layoffs.
I'm thinking of whale pods.
Show me something, and he cameback and it was good.
I said, Yeah, yeah, it makessense.
I did some editing.
I said, Okay, give me paragraphtwo.
(32:21):
Normally I work with Chat GPT,give me a paragraph, then give
me another paragraph, give meanother paragraph, and then give
me another paragraph.
And it was good.
It wasn't really it, it didn'thit the sweet spot of how I
wanted to express it.
So I took all the paragraphs, Ithink there were about six
(32:43):
paragraphs for the newsletter.
I recognized that I would haveto break it into two
newsletters, which I did.
And I fed the whole newsletteras ChatGPT had into Claude.
I just took it and said, okay,I'm gonna put it over here in
Claude.
I really like Claude.
(33:04):
I really like the way, theprosaic way Claude takes an idea
and explains it in a wonderfulway, a beautiful language.
I give it the prompt, you know,uh, here's my uh this is the
voice I want to use.
Uh I want to be warm, humorouswhen I can't, where I can't be
professional, those kinds ofthings.
(33:24):
And and Claude came back with anabsolutely beautifully done um
newsletter for both sides.
First side.
Now I had to go in, you know.
People who think you just put itin the Claude or put it in AI
and walk away are out of theirmind.
It took several hours ofediting, changing a few words
(33:49):
here and there.
I don't want to say it this way,I want to say it that way
because that's much more myvoice, those kinds of things.
And Claude then gave me theoutput I used, the final output
I used, which I then dumped intothe AI features of Grammarly,
and went through, and there wassome phrasing that Grammarly
(34:09):
didn't like, and I made thosechanges.
But sometimes I'll say, No, Iwant to keep that.
I like that because that's theway I would say it if I was
standing in front of a fewpeople.
And that's how I wrote thattwo-part newsletter using
different systems.
Um, one other thing, I'llmention this other thing.
In this webinar that I did, Icreated two uh Pixar type
(34:34):
avatars.
I call one Rev for you know, thethrottle up, Rev up.
I thought that was pretty cool.
Rev.
And the other one, a woman namedLexi.
All around the upper 30s kind ofa look, but they're Pixar
characters.
I use Rev to introduce theoverall concept of the webinar,
(34:59):
and I use Lexi to close out thewebinar doing the summation, and
I'm in, you know, and I'm doingthe actual webinar.
I'm on screen with the people.
I use two systems to do that.
I use HeyGen.
I have a subscription, and I useRunway ML.
(35:19):
Runway ML has an amazingcapability, it's not there yet,
because the best it can do foryou is about an eight-second
video, and my videos for thosetwo characters run about a
minute, but eventually I believeRunway ML will get to a minute,
and then it's going to beunbelievable what you can do.
Now, I'll I'll mention thispoint because I think it's
(35:41):
important.
I have a colleague named Chuck.
Chuck's a wonderful speaker,he's an internationally known
speaker.
Uh several weeks ago, I was inChuck's studio in North
Carolina.
He's just merged with anothercompany.
You see the studio, it'sunbelievable.
They must have anywhere betweena half a million to a million
(36:02):
dollars worth of equipment init.
They have a teleprompter that'sthe size of a 32-inch screen.
It's unbelievable.
And Chuck and several cameraslocated in different positions.
Chuck made a perfect avatar ofhimself.
Perfect.
You cannot tell the difference.
SPEAKER_01 (36:23):
With HeyGen?
SPEAKER_00 (36:24):
He he I he I forget what system he used.
I think Hey Jen was part of it.
I think he used uh uh what's theother one called?
Uh I think of it.
It's the it's the wording 11Labs.
11 labs, thank you.
He used 11 labs and other toolsthat he has at his disposal,
along with the people that he'snow working with.
(36:45):
It was perfect.
And Chuck's goal is to putcontent out like that.
You know, here's here's Chuckdoing this thing.
I made the conscious decisionnot to do that.
I made a conscious decision.
I I could probably gin up, ifyou will, an avatar of me.
But I won't do that.
(37:05):
And I don't want to do it forfor this one reason.
I absolutely believe people wantto connect with other people.
Yeah I absolutely believe that.
I want people to know when theysee me on a screen, it's me.
SPEAKER_02 (37:18):
Not an avatar.
SPEAKER_01 (37:19):
The real deal.
SPEAKER_00 (37:20):
It's I'm the real deal.
Here it is.
Good or bad, here it is.
Now I can use the avatars assort of a fun way or a way to
shift energy, if you will, in apresentation to help me make
points about certain thingswhere I can put them in and you
know, uh make a little fun ofmyself using the avatars, if you
(37:43):
will, that kind of a thing.
So that's kind of the way uh uhI see it in in answer to your
question.
SPEAKER_01 (37:51):
Very cool.
W if if people wanted to take alook at Rev and Lexi, uh, where
where could they find them?
SPEAKER_00 (37:58):
Well, right now they're not anywhere.
Okay.
Um they're they're on thewebinar.
Um, but I would very much, youknow, if people want a
demonstration, they can send mean email at John at
throttleupleadership.com, and Iwould be glad to stage a
demonstration for them and showthem how I did it.
SPEAKER_01 (38:19):
Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun, honestly.
Um, a really practical use ofthe technology.
You know, I I've I've definitelythought about Chuck's approach
with creating my own avatar andloading it up with content and
basically doing all thepodcasting for me, and it didn't
(38:39):
feel right.
I'm not there yet.
So I definitely believewholeheartedly that content
creators now and in the futureare going to find their value
driven from who they are andtheir own personal voice and
their the own their ownconnection that they make with
(39:00):
their audience.
And I don't believe that's goingto change just because it's
easier to do it with generativetools.
SPEAKER_00 (39:08):
Right.
One of the women I follow on uhon uh YouTube is a woman by the
name of Julia McCoy.
Julie McCoy is an AI umentrepreneur, uh heads a group
called First Movers, doestraining, uh, and she has an
avatar of herself that she callsDr.
Julia McCoy.
It's brilliant, absolutelybrilliant.
(39:31):
Um, but what you she first ofall, she introduces herself.
The avatar introduces herself asJulia McCoy's avatar.
So she's very upfront with that,which is I like a lot.
But the other thing is Julia'sbeen through, and I don't know
the particulars of it, butJulia's been through some real
health crises over the course ofthe last several months.
(39:51):
My heart goes out to her,really.
And uh I can understand why shewould use the avatar.
SPEAKER_02 (39:57):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (39:58):
I have no problem with it at all because she's
feeding the scripts.
The avatar is doing what itneeds to do to present her
perspective uh every week orevery couple of days on the
changes in AI.
And you know, I'm good withthat.
I will just mention, I will alsomention this.
(40:18):
I'm getting ready to write ahandbook, um, and um, which is
going to be a summation ofprobably 15 podcasts that I've
conducted in different areas,like HR, like AA, leadership in
AI, uh, those kinds of things.
And there'll be a summation, ifyou will, of those uh of those
(40:43):
uh 15 podcasts.
And right now I'm I'm I'm up tonumber 100 140.
But but so I got a lot of I'vegot a lot of content.
And um, but I but I I am goingto put in the beginning of the
handbook what I call a statementof transparency.
(41:03):
And that will be this is yes,this is how I used AI.
This is what AI did, this iswhat I did.
You know, all the theinformation came from raw
transcriptions of me on camerawith a real person, that kind of
thing.
So I think that's I think it'svitally important we tell that
(41:26):
up front and be truthful aboutit.
SPEAKER_01 (41:28):
Yeah, definitely.
So let's let's look ahead a bit,maybe 10 years, um, when AI
potentially is fully integratedinto most organizations.
What do you think the role ofthe human leader looks like?
SPEAKER_00 (41:44):
What a wonderful question.
I've been thinking about this,and I'll explain it this way in
terms of variables andconstants.
Okay, so let's go back to thedawn of the computer age for an
example.
The dawn of the computer age,when people computers were just
coming online in the late 80sand the 90s, people were the
(42:11):
constant, and computers were thevariable.
How people brought computersinto companies changed the way
they did business, made theirbusiness more efficient.
They were, let's just say,computer augmented.
I can remember working in acompany that started using
(42:31):
spreadsheets to cost projects.
Probably one of the first onesto do it.
Okay.
So in those days, let me justsay that again for clarity,
people were the people were theconstant, and computers were the
variable.
Today, computers are theconstant, and people are the
(42:54):
variable.
How people chose to createapplications.
Everybody today has a computer.
Your cell phone is a computer.
So, and and every day, newapplications, whether you're on
Windows, Linux, whether you'reon uh uh uh Mac iOS, people
created applications that werefeatured on each one of those to
(43:18):
do different things, right?
The creativity of the humanstill prevailed.
Now, let's look five to tenyears down the road.
Today, as you and I speak,people are the constant, and AI
is the variable, but in veryshort order, I believe, AI will
(43:43):
become the constant, and peoplewill become the variable.
What this says to me is thecreativity of people will
prevail again, especially if werework the approach, as Darren
(44:04):
Amalagu says, we appro uh reworkthe approach to augmenting
people with AI.
So in the future, when AI isubiquitous as computers have
become, to me, the leader, aperson, the creation of a new
company, the creation of a newapplication will still be
(44:29):
prevailed by the human.
SPEAKER_01 (44:33):
Wow.
That's beautiful.
That's a very positive messageto share.
SPEAKER_00 (44:38):
Yeah, and I mean, let's be honest here.
We don't know what, we don'tknow what that AI system will
look like five or ten yearsright now.
SPEAKER_01 (44:46):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (44:47):
If if we push the hype aside, push it all aside,
say, okay, let's get it out ofthe way just for a minute.
You know, all these investments,billions of dollars
transferring, billions ofdollars inflating stock prices
where nothing in reality hasbeen exchanged yet.
Just worse, we're gonna buy somuch computing power from
(45:10):
Oracle, for example, the bigOracle announcement.
Stock prices went through theroof.
Yeah, 100, another hundredbillion dollars.
So, but what has really changedhands?
What has really been done?
Well, we don't know.
We're all waiting to see.
So again, we just we just haveto let things play out.
(45:32):
Let's see where it really windsup.
Yeah, and when you've got anoble laureate saying, take your
time, you know, let's reallytake a hard look at this.
And a lot of people now, andagain, we go back to the
fatigue, people are pushingback.
I've had enough.
I can't drink from this firehose anymore.
You know, I just need to take abreak.
I think that really sayssomething about how the human
(45:55):
will in the end uh make the bigdifference, right?
unknown (46:00):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (46:01):
Yeah, it's a the there's a big circular
investment strategy that I thinkmost people can't see because
it's so big and staggeringinvestments, and only the
insiders, investment insidersreally know what's going on with
those investments and howthey're playing to the feeding
into the market, if you will.
(46:23):
Right.
And driving up the inflation ofthe of the value stocks these
days.
SPEAKER_00 (46:29):
Well, here's here's the thing.
Let's go back to one of the yourorigin one of your questions
beforehand.
What we see, what we can see isthe mission.
We can see the activities, butit's hard to see what their real
strategy is.
We don't know what the strata,the real in-house strategy is.
(46:51):
We can kind of surmise whatthey're doing.
I mean, if you look at open AI,for example, right?
OpenAI goes out and buys JohnnyIve's company for six point, I
think, two billion dollars.
What is Johnny Ive was thecreator of the Apple products?
(47:13):
So one can say, well, looks likethey're gonna make themselves
some sort of open AI pocketsystem that you can carry around
with you.
We can kind of take a look atthat, but we haven't seen
anything yet.
We're wondering what that lookslike.
Um, I can't think of the name ofthe company, but uh Elon Musk
(47:35):
and uh SpaceX just put down 17billion dollars to buy bandwidth
from uh I can't think of thename of the company, which means
you know he's going to have anincredible capability to use
Starlink in a in a totallydifferent way.
So we don't know what thestrategy is per se.
(47:58):
I don't know.
And um we're just watching theactivities uh play themselves
out more than anything.
SPEAKER_01 (48:05):
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's a lot of incrementalmoves that that these tech
leaders are are making, and theyI think they're grasping at the
market segments in various ways.
Like I think about the roboticsthat Elon Musk is also getting
into, and they're all comingtogether to ensure uh US has the
(48:29):
ability to stay ahead of Chinain its capabilities, and you
know, the first to AGI or ASIare uh are gonna win the future
kind of um ideologies that areseemingly driving their um
investment strategies and andmomentum.
I I think that they're alllooking to create practical use
(48:54):
cases that they they haven'treally quite grasped, but the
one that you mentioned just amoment ago, like putting it into
like a new hand handheld deviceof some sort or a new computer
system, I think that's that'struly practical.
Like I did a podcast a few weeksback about the future of
(49:16):
operating systems and how AI isgonna change them and leverage
all the applications on yoursystem and do more of the
thinking and work for you.
SPEAKER_00 (49:26):
Right?
SPEAKER_01 (49:26):
I think that's where it's going, honestly.
SPEAKER_00 (49:28):
Yeah, and that's why, from my perspective, you
need a new leadership operatingsystem.
Because what that's going to do,it's gonna enable the creative,
it's gonna be enable the abilityto unleash the creative
capability of all the people inthe organization, not just a
(49:50):
few, not just a leader.
Yeah.
And whether they and whether andwhether companies realize this
or not, those companies thatstick to the old traditional
leadership models may very wellfind themselves being dragged
into the undertow of change asit happens every day.
(50:14):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (50:15):
Well, it's not scalable.
Like you said, it's notscalable.
And we need to we need to findscalable systems in order to get
through the adoption rate of thechange and adapt our curr our
our systems and and you knowprocesses around these new
capabilities.
Otherwise, we're we'redefinitely going to fall behind
(50:37):
as organizations and leaders.
SPEAKER_00 (50:39):
Right.
Because you can when you seeleadership as a system, when you
see leadership as uh a group ofaugmented, AI augmented people
working together, that'sscalable.
Yeah.
You can scale that up becausenow everybody has influence.
Everybody can be part of the ofthe movement forward.
(51:02):
But if you have a leader, uh,you know, you're bound by what
that leader uh is capable ofdoing or allows the organization
to do.
SPEAKER_01 (51:11):
Yep.
Great.
Well, I know we're we're comingup on time, so yeah.
So, John, it it's been uh greatdiscussion so far.
I just have one more questionfor you.
If you could redesign leadershipeducation for the 21st century,
what would you start teachingtomorrow?
SPEAKER_00 (51:31):
Well, a couple of things.
First of all, I would start toteach leadership as an influence
relationship and as leadershipas a system.
I would get away fromconcentrating on the individual,
the individual traits orcharacteristics of an
individual.
(51:52):
And that is why I created thelead some simulation.
Okay, I I created the simulationas a learn by doing opportunity.
Immerse people into a simulationexperience where they're given
an issue or a problem.
And this is something I'venoticed.
(52:13):
When you give people a problemor an issue and they have to
work together on it, all theother stuff that separates
people, that makes, you know,that that that causes arguments
dissipates.
Because why?
Now they're focused onsomething, they have to do
something.
And when you say to people, youhave to do something now, you
(52:35):
have to you have to deal withthis issue or problem, the the
the things that we we talk aboutevery day, the human
characteristics sort of getpushed to the side, and people
begin to work togethercollaboratively.
So I believe that the best wayto teach leadership is to put
(52:55):
people into a simulation or in aI like to call it crawl, walk,
run sort of opportunity, wherethey they're given something,
they learn how the processworks, and then in fact, they
they um get a chance to actuallydo leadership under realistic
scenario, and let's see whatthey've got.
Now you've got an opportunity todo some things like a see their
(53:19):
mental models.
Their mental models of how theydo business float to the top.
Now you got something to workwith.
Now you've got something to say.
Wait a minute, this is what yousaid.
Why don't you try doing it thisway?
Or maybe you should ease off onthis and try thinking more about
asking questions rather thanjust trying to tell people what
to do.
Let's see what that does.
(53:40):
Okay, so that to me is reallywhere I have seen changes occur.
So to me, that's really umimportant.
Do I think we can continue withleader development training?
Yeah, I think we can do that.
Okay, but what I really wantpeople to understand and get is
(54:05):
this we talk, I can't tell youhow many times I've talked to
people on my podcast aboutauthenticity or about empathy.
Good things, except when we talkabout authenticity authenticity
or about empathy, we talk aboutthe leader having authenticity
(54:26):
and empathy.
And when that is the case, thoseare traits.
What I want to see is whenauthenticity and empathy becomes
imbued in the group.
In in the system, in the group.
So it goes from being a trait tobeing a value.
(54:50):
This is the value we hold true.
We treat each other in anauthentic way.
We treat each other uh withempathy towards one another.
Now from a trait, it becomes avalue.
And here's the beauty of it a,you can scale it, and B, when
the leader leaves and a newleader shows up, that leader has
(55:13):
to come into the system and bepart of an ongoing system that
values authenticity and empathy.
I think that to me is really,really important, is is and
that's part of the scaling.
Now we've got everybody workingon the issues in the problems.
Now we've got people, a group ofpeople working on strategic
(55:36):
thinking, looking at theproblems and the issues that we
might face, and then we'retaking that and transferring
that to the strategic planners,and they're figuring out how to
spend money to go after that.
And every day, and we kind ofkeep doing this system, and
every day, maybe every 18months, we do a strategic
thinking.
You know, are we lying toourselves here?
What's the truth?
(55:56):
How do we change those kinds ofthings?
So for me, I would, I would, Iwould, you have to add the
practical side of it.
You have to add the idea thatleadership is what people do
together.
And the doing of leadership canbest be taught in an immersive,
(56:18):
simulated environment where it'ssafe to try new things, safe to
play, so they can go out andsay, I really understand now how
this works.
I really understand the mistakesI've made.
I really understand that I needto make a mindset shift.
So for me, that's kind of whereI'm at in terms of leadership
(56:40):
training.
SPEAKER_01 (56:41):
Yeah.
No, it's it's absolute gold.
And I really connected there onthe creating uh an environment,
developing a culture around theleadership skills, and it
requires people to step intothat and and embody that it's um
so much truth in in theauthenticity.
You know, when you when yourecognize uh an authentic
(57:03):
leader, it's it's noticeable.
And there's some something thatuh it's it's really special
about an organization thatallows that to happen.
SPEAKER_00 (57:13):
Yeah.
Let me just say one final wordon on uh if I can.
Yeah.
The engine that runs everyorganization, the engine that
the fuel, let me take that back.
The fuel that runs everyorganization, the fuel that runs
every relationship is trust.
(57:33):
If you have no trust, you havenothing.
You have no relationship.
Now, when people talk abouttrust, here's the thing, one of
the things they miss.
When we talk about trust, weoftentimes talk about the
ability of people to trust theleader, and that the leader has
(57:56):
to trust the people.
But oftentimes what we miss isthat the people have to trust
one another.
That it's a system of trust.
Because if you if one or two ofthe people in a group, let's say
a group of 15, don't trust oneanother, it drags the rest of
(58:18):
the group down.
It's the old car batteryanalogy.
A battery, car battery, is onlyas strong as the weakest cell.
So it's absolutely vital thatmutual trust becomes the mantra
of organizations.
And when you have mutual trust,when you have strong mutual
(58:43):
trust, then you can faceambiguity and doubt very boldly,
because you know thatcollaboration is a tool you can
call upon, that authenticityinside your system of
relationships in anorganization, empathy for one
(59:04):
another, is the value systemthat you use to create the
collaboration to deal with theproblems as they appear.
SPEAKER_01 (59:12):
That's beautiful.
Thank you for the final note.
And John, this has been such aninspiring conversation.
SPEAKER_00 (59:18):
Oh, thank you.
SPEAKER_01 (59:20):
I appreciate you sharing all your insights and
energy with us this morning.
And for everyone listening, youcan find Dr.
John Dentiko's work in his book,Rottle Up: How to Accelerate the
Impact of 21st CenturyLeadership.
And on his Rottle Up Leadershippodcast, which I know I look
forward to listening to.
(59:40):
And as we close, I'll leave youwith the John's challenge.
Don't slow down to survive theAI era.
Roddala, delete it.
Thanks again for tuning in toInspire AI.
This is Jason McGinthy,reminding you to stay curious,
stay bold, and keep leading withmeaning.
Welcome back to Inspire AI, the podcast where we
explore how artificialintelligence is transforming the
way we live, lead, and learn.
Today's episode dives deep intoone of the biggest challenges of
our time (00:13):
how to lead in a world moving faster than ever before.
Think about it, most leadershipmodels we still use today were
designed for the factory floor,built for control, efficiency,
and predictability.
But AI doesn't play by thoserules.
It's accelerating change,amplifying complexity, forcing
(00:34):
leaders to rethink what itreally means to lead humans in
the age of machines.
Our guest today has been waiting30 years for this moment.
Dr.
John Dentico is the leadershipstrategist, author of Throttle
Up, How to Accelerate the Impactof 21st Century Leadership,
(00:55):
creator of the T-SwitchStrategic Thinking Method and
the Lead SIM Leadership ImpactSimulation Method, and host of
the Throttle Up LeadershipPodcast, currently ranked number
three on Matchmaker.fm, anonline platform that connects
podcasters with potentialguests.
His work centers on what hecalls the Throttle Up Leadership
(01:17):
Operating System, a new modelfor thriving amid speed,
complexity, and change.
John, welcome to Inspire AI.
It's great to have you here.
So you've been writing andthinking about leadership for
decades.
Do you see this as a suddendisruption, or is AI simply
(01:40):
amplifying something that's beenbuilding for years?
SPEAKER_00 (01:43):
Well, I think what AI is doing is pulling back the
curtain on leadership modelsthat are no longer relevant to
the world that we live in rightnow.
I mean, I was there at thebeginning, I'd like to say, when
the computer, when computerswere just coming online, uh,
when browsers were just comingonline.
(02:04):
Uh I can remember, quitefrankly, when I left active duty
in the Navy sitting in an officewhere uh talking to a gentleman,
and behind him sat a computer,but we didn't call them
computers then.
We called them terminals.
And on that terminal wasMillnet, which now, which later
(02:25):
became the internet.
So what AI is doing, this rapidadvancement is it's it's
basically pulled back thecurtain on why the the models of
leadership that no longer work.
And I mean, here's a data point.
30, about 30 to 30, 32 to 33percent of people in the
(02:50):
workforce in the United Statestoday are engaged in their work,
which means 70% are somewhatengaged or not engaged at all.
Just that one little statisticwould tell you that the
leadership models have failed orare failing.
And um, the time has come, andAI is proving it to us every day
(03:13):
that we change our perspectiveon what leadership is in this AI
world.
SPEAKER_01 (03:21):
So just generally referencing your data point
there, you're saying that theengagement of the workforce is
directly impacted by theleadership uh model of today.
Because you said that 70% of theworkforce isn't engaged, and
that is a direct result of poorleadership or outdated
(03:44):
leadership.
SPEAKER_00 (03:45):
Outdated leadership, uh, an outdated leadership
amount.
In fact, 17% of the people thatwere surveyed say they are
actively disengaged.
And this comes from a Gallup uhpoll taken in mid-2025, long
after COVID uh ended.
unknown (04:03):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (04:04):
Well, thank you for grounding us on that.
Um, I understand that you'vesaid the 1950s factory floor
model of leadership is finallybeing shredded by the speed of
change.
So can you unpack that model,what it looked like, and why
it's no longer working for us?
SPEAKER_00 (04:21):
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, first you have to go backa little bit to the history.
I mean, if you look at 1950, itwas right after World War II.
Okay.
Every country had beendevastated by the war.
Uh we flooded the Roar RiverValley, uh, German uh German
(04:41):
industry was completely done.
Uh uh we had dropped two nuclearweapons on Japan.
So, so anything we made, whenwhen we shifted from a wartime
footing to a peacetime footing,and we stopped making combat
aircraft and ships and startedmaking refrigerators, uh trucks,
(05:02):
and uh washing machines.
Uh uh, anything we sold,anything we made, we sold.
The world just bought it.
Anything we made, we soldbecause there was such a uh a
desperate hunger for anything.
And that's when the leadershipmodels grew up.
That's where they started in the50s, and they've continued on
(05:26):
today.
And the difference, quitefrankly, is this in the
traditional leadership models,leadership is attributed to one
person, the leader.
It's the leader who bestows orgives us leadership.
As opposed to the models todaywhere we see leadership more
(05:47):
about an influence relationshipwhere people, where anyone can
have influence in the dynamic.
So that's a very, very bigdifference when you look at how
leadership was created or lookedat from a psychological, you
know, if we make better leaders,we'll get better leadership.
(06:11):
Well, maybe not.
Maybe there's more to the puzzlethan than just making better
leaders.
So that's that's kind of the wayI see it in terms of the uh
1950s model.
SPEAKER_01 (06:24):
And can you talk a little bit more about why it no
longer works?
SPEAKER_00 (06:29):
It no longer works because, especially in the world
of AI, because now, okay, thethe old 1950s model hinged on
the fact that the leader of theorganization had the knowledge
and the information in order tomake decisions.
It was the leaders told us whatwe needed to do, and people
(06:52):
complied.
Okay, that's kind of the way itwas, and still remains a lot of
today.
But now it's a different story.
Now you have in an organization26 or 27-year-old people who
have access to a number ofdifferent artificial
intelligence tools, for example,engines, who now have the
(07:15):
information and knowledge attheir fingertips.
So the CEO no longer, or thesenior leaders in the
organization, no longer have agrip on that information and
knowledge.
So the question becomes, andagain, if we move to this idea
of leadership as an influencerelationship, which is what I
believe in, and anybody can haveinfluence, then the question is
(07:38):
how do you use those resourcesat your disposal, the people
with all this tremendouscapability at hand in order to
uh move your organizationforward to help solve the
problems or, in a sense, lookinto the future.
SPEAKER_01 (07:53):
Fascinating.
Thank you.
So if control and predictabilityused to define leadership, what
replaces those values now?
You mentioned things likeinfluence and definitely the
vast amounts of knowledge.
SPEAKER_00 (08:06):
Right.
Well, here comes the shocker.
Okay.
Today, organizations need toembrace doubt and ambiguity.
Those are the two things thatreplace predictability and
control.
Doubt and ambiguity.
But here's the beauty of that.
When doubt and ambiguityprevails in the decision-making
(08:29):
environment, it naturally kicksthe door open to collaboration.
Why?
Well, because people don't know.
And you have to invite otherpeople into the decisional
dynamic.
And it really, it really givesyou the true opportunity to
collaborate.
And right now, the world is,especially the AI world, with
(08:54):
all the hype and all the newsthat breaks seemingly every day.
We are in the middle of a doubtand ambiguity complex that's
beyond explanation in manyrespects.
SPEAKER_01 (09:08):
Yeah.
Doubt and ambiguity.
Yeah, I I think about all of thewonderful collaboration sessions
I get to, I'm privy to at work.
And I feel like that's that'spretty spot on.
Um you find a problem to solveand you have no idea how to
solve it, and you can't solve iton your own.
So you invite the workforce tohelp you.
SPEAKER_00 (09:30):
And that's where, for my for my money, that's
where the greatest, the singlegreatest motivation force on the
planet, meaning, starts to takehold.
There's nothing that compares tomeaning as a motivation force.
So when people are fullyinvolved in the decisional
processes, they derive a senseof meaning from that.
(09:53):
They make a difference, theirwork makes a difference.
So that's it, may look likecollaboration, you know, in
front of you, but there's a lotof a lot of other deep things
that are going on.
And for me, meaning now isreally the fundamental uh glue
(10:15):
that organizations need topursue in their leadership
practices.
The question, how do we createan environment where people come
to do their best work?
How do we create an environmentwhere people gain a sense of
meaning from the things thatthey do every single day?
That is a mindset shift from theold traditional models, just
(10:36):
follow our orders, we'll takecare of you, to now you're fully
involved in where thisorganization goes.
SPEAKER_01 (10:44):
Amazing.
I intuitively feel I knowexactly what you're talking
about.
I think deeply about thesethings at in my office all the
time.
Try to keep associates engaged.
And meaning is the one thingthat attracts me most to the
work in and of itself.
Just to even want to supportothers and in their growth and
(11:05):
aspirations, that's meaning forme.
And helping others find meaningin in their work, I think, is
one of my strongest sense ofpurposes as a leader in my
organization.
I love the things you're sayinghere, is really what I'm getting
to.
SPEAKER_00 (11:21):
I'll give you another, I'll give you another
metaphor if you'd like.
Yeah.
You know, in the traditionalmodels, the 1950s models, we
raised, and I've been talkingabout this a lot in my own
podcast, but we raised ageneration of Jedi Knight.
We raised a generation of JediKnights with the expressed idea
of them, of the CEOs, the seniorleaders, brandishing their light
(11:44):
swords, if you will, and and uhdriving away and vanquishing the
problems and issues of theorganization.
So they were the criticalactors, they were the sole
actors, if you will, of theorganization.
But when you create meaning,part of creating meaning is for
CEOs now to see themselves morelike Yoda, the teacher, the
(12:11):
facilitator, the person whobrings people together and says,
How can we go together to solvethese problems?
Okay, the leadership model Istarted developing over 30 years
ago has one basic intrinsicfoundation, and that is
contribution.
(12:33):
Contribution is the is the isthe bottom line of my leadership
model.
Here's a problem, here's anissue, who has an idea who can
help us, who can take us downthe road?
Well, let's just put it all onthe table and see where it takes
us.
So that to me, again, is theshift in mindset from leadership
(12:55):
by one person to leadershipscaled in the ability of a
group, now AI augmented, to helppush the organization or bring
the organization forward.
SPEAKER_01 (13:10):
Lovely.
I think we're getting into it,but I want to talk more about
the system, the throttled upleadership operating system.
What exactly is throttled upoperating system and what
inspired you to create it?
SPEAKER_00 (13:23):
Well, um, we've already touched on some of those
things.
I mean, I was part of a groupagain, 30 years ago, over 30
years ago now, that saw thedistribution of information and
knowledge into the hands of themasses.
That's what we saw.
That's what has happened.
And some of us looked at it andsaid, you know, if this thing
(13:45):
continues to go like it's going,the the whole the whole impetus
behind leadership is going tochange because now you have
knowledge and information in thehands of many people.
So my work in in leadership hasalways been focused on that
idea.
Eventually, and I guess today isthe day, or the the the
(14:07):
leadership perspective has tochange.
It has to change becauseknowledge and information will
be in the hands of people.
Okay, so uh I see leadership asa system, a process, leadership
is a process, it's not somethingrelegated to one individual.
Okay, I make a differentiation.
Let me just back up just for asecond.
95% of all the leadershiptraining that goes on today is
(14:32):
all about is called the I callit the human development side of
the leadership equation.
So what we try to do is we wewe're looking to impart into
people certain ideas andthoughts.
We're looking for great leadersand traits.
(14:53):
Okay.
What are their traits?
Do they have the right the rightamount of charisma?
Do they have all these differentkinds of things?
Okay, because again, leadershipresides in that one individual,
the leader, which by the way, isnot scalable.
Okay, one person is notscalable.
(15:13):
So so that is the humandevelopment side of leadership,
okay.
And that's where most eventoday, I mean, I've interviewed
over a hundred people on mypodcast, and and the same themes
keep coming out.
You know, it's all about thisone, it's all about leadership
as a human development thing.
Okay.
(15:34):
I make a differentiation, Idon't call that leadership
development, I call it leaderdevelopment.
It's leader development, okay?
And that's okay, it's all right,but what we forget is the
conversion factor.
Okay.
So what does that mean?
Well, that means that can thatperson who we've put so much
(15:58):
leaders leader training intoconvert that knowledge into
action?
Can they do something with thatknowledge?
Okay, it's like a golfer, okay?
We can send them all the booksand videos of how to play golf,
and but can they drive the balldown the middle of the fairway
(16:18):
320 yards?
Well, that's the conversionfactor.
So the question is, can they doleadership?
So the differentiation is whileI while I say this is leader
development, for me, leadershipis practice and action.
Okay, that's the shippy part ofleadership, is putting
(16:40):
leadership into action.
Okay, so the throttle up OS isbased on creating an environment
and creating a way thatleadership as a process, as a
system, can be put into anorganization and and help that
(17:04):
organization thrive.
There are four basic pillars,and I'll just explain what the
pillars are to throttle up OS.
First, mission.
You have to have a mission, aclearly defined mission, a
one-sentence mission.
I mean, last year I was workingwith a company that had a
mission statement that was apage long.
(17:24):
And I worked with them.
I did a strategic thinkingsession with them.
A page was one, it was one pagelong.
We got it down to like ninewords.
I had it down to about 15 or 18words.
And during the session, at theend of the session, the people
from the company said, Let'swork on the mission statement.
I said, Okay, so now it's downto about seven or eight words.
Very clear, very succinct,beautiful, crystal clear.
(17:49):
You have to have a mission.
The second piece is strategy.
Okay, now you have this mission.
What is the strategy to carryout the mission?
Too often, and that is based onstrategic thinking, not
strategic planning.
Because normally what happens ispeople go from a mission to
strategic planning, they go tothe plans and they skip the
thinking part of it.
(18:11):
And there is a differencebetween strategic thinking and
strategic planning.
And quickly, it's this strategicplanning looks to find answers
to questions normally given tous by the senior leaders in the
organization.
Strategic thinking is all aboutasking the right questions.
Making sure you're asking theright questions.
(18:32):
The halls of business are linedwith the empty carcasses of
organizations and businesses whonever asked themselves the right
questions.
They didn't even want to knowwhat the right questions are.
They just went right to theplans and the tactics, and they
just kept doing and doing,doing.
So that's the second, that's avol, that's a vital piece.
(18:53):
From that, you can take what youget out of a strategic thinking
session, and then you go tostrategic planning.
Then there comes the plans.
Okay, this is what we said weneeded to do.
This is one of the issues wehave to deal with.
Okay, here, let's give it to thestrategic planners.
Let's figure out now how we'regoing to solve this problem,
where we're going to spendmoney.
(19:14):
How are we going to spend money?
Where we're going to spend it inorder to deal with this real
problem that we see is facingthem.
And then the third part, and thefourth part, excuse me, is
execution.
Okay, so now here's the money.
What are we going to do?
Is it, do we institute atraining program?
Do we institute across-functional team training
(19:34):
program?
Uh, do we buy new technology?
Okay, what is that technologygot to look like?
So those are the foundationalpieces of the throttled up OS.
And again, it's based onleadership as an influence
relationship.
Leadership's a system.
This we put the system intoplace, and if we do it right,
the system will help theorganization take care of
(19:55):
itself.
So that's kind of where that'sthat is where where my thinking
is right now.
SPEAKER_01 (20:04):
Such a well-refined process.
It it sounds like it it can beapplied anywhere.
And you know, you've you'veworked for decades on it, so I I
I wouldn't imagine anythingless, but uh it's very appealing
to listen to you speak sosuccinctly about that um
operating system.
And uh it just you know it drewme in for it could have been an
(20:27):
hour.
I I I don't know what what itwas, but I I just felt so
connected to everything you weresaying.
SPEAKER_00 (20:33):
Um yeah, and and oftentimes what happens is
people go from from uh frommission statements to to plans,
yeah, and they forget about thethinking.
So what they, you know, becausehere's the thing, and I'm all in
favor.
I'm here to protect CEOs ofcompanies.
I'm here to protect them, I'mhere to take care of them.
Okay, not not to push them asideat all.
(20:56):
But it was we both know.
The larger the organizationgrows, especially organizations
still enraptured with thebureaucratic mindset, the
bureaucratic uh organization,and uh the that that
organization speaks to us, ittalks to us through the
organization chart, right?
(21:16):
The organization chart is thelanguage of bureaucracy.
So what happens many times isthere are things buried many
times by people inside thebureaucratic organization that
they don't want to bring to thesurface.
They would rather not sayanything about it because maybe
(21:37):
they feel uh challenged by it,or they may they think the
senior leaders in theorganization may think them
incompetent or uncapable of orincapable of taking things in
their own hands and doingsomething with it.
So what we want to do instrategic thinking is unearth
(21:59):
those in a non-threatening way.
Believe me, it's non-threateningway where we say, hey, here's
the issues, here's the problems.
Where you know, what are we whatare we gonna do?
I mean, not what are we gonnado, but here's the things you
really need to work on.
These are the things that aregonna derail your company.
So now let's take that to plansand then let's go spend money on
(22:20):
that.
SPEAKER_01 (22:21):
That's beautiful.
Yeah, so there's a quote herethat you like to use from Sun
Tzu.
It's tactics without strategy isthe noise before defeat.
So, how does that idea relate tothe way leaders are adopting AI
today?
SPEAKER_00 (22:39):
Well, uh boy, that's that's a heavy question.
Um, I think I think I touchedupon that just previously.
I think I see a lot of AItactics.
Everybody trying to sell theirwares, everybody talking about
this is what we're going to beable to do.
So here's here's the thing thatI see.
(23:00):
What I see in AI is thateverybody is going to the
tactics.
And part of the tactics, part ofwhat AI is presenting to people
is efficiency, cost cutting andefficiency by, in a sense, oh,
we're going to eliminate allthese jobs, and therefore the
(23:21):
companies themselves will bemore efficient and uh and be
make better profit.
But Darren Aeson Maglu, who isthe Nobel Prize-winning MIT
economist, says not so fast.
He estimates that only fivepercent of um jobs in certain
(23:49):
specific areas will beeliminated in the next 10 years.
One of the things that he pointsout, and this is very
interesting, is that AI isportraying itself as an
efficiency cost-cutting toolwhere people will replace.
And what he's saying, and what Iabsolutely believe in, I'll just
(24:11):
say that personally, is that wehave to create the AI tools to
be augmentation to the human inan organization.
That to me is really it's theway I use it.
And and I think that that'swhere it will settle out.
I can tell you, honestly, andI've been doing some research in
(24:32):
this, and it was this actuallycame from a webinar I did a
couple of weeks ago where I hadthe opportunity before we began
the webinar to talk to the womanwho was in charge of the
training, that people are nowsuffering a tremendous amount of
AI fatigue.
I feel it.
SPEAKER_01 (24:49):
Say more.
SPEAKER_00 (24:51):
Well, we're so overwhelming people with the
prospect of AI.
We see Chat GPT, uh, you know,Sam Altman, and we see Darien,
Darien Amadai from Perplexity,and uh Jensen Wong talking about
all these amazing things thatare going to happen with AI.
(25:14):
You know, the hype behind it isis unbelievable.
It's it's creating quite thebubble.
Yeah, it's creating quite thebubble, and no one knows where
it's going to settle out.
I believe I'm saying the truthhere.
I believe Sam Altman saidrecently that we are in a
bubble.
And people are looking at itgoing, okay, so we're we're
(25:39):
waiting for it to burst.
But this is the thing.
The level of investment in AIright now is staggering.
SPEAKER_01 (25:48):
In the trillions.
SPEAKER_00 (25:49):
In the trillions.
I'll give you an example, youknow, and I'll give you an
example.
I mean, I think it's it's Ithink the last time I looked,
Claude was valued somewhere inthe neighborhood of 250 to 300
billion dollars.
Okay, okay, and Dario Amadi saidto train the next generation of
(26:15):
Claude will take$100 billion.
That's a lot of money.
But here's the thing that noone's looking at.
You know, one of the fat one ofthe players that is in the
background, and that is SaudiArabia.
Saudi Arabia has a fund called aPIF fund.
In that fund, it's over 900billion dollars.
(26:37):
They made a uh they created aplan called Vision 2030 in 2016,
where they're moving away fromoil and going to create a tech
center in Riyadh.
Tomorrow morning they coulddecide to get up and buy the
clock.
And they would have anincredible capability at their
(26:59):
fingertips and in a sense beimmediately recognized as a as a
leading tech center in theworld.
SPEAKER_01 (27:07):
So they already have an infrastructure built for
this, is what they've beenplanning for.
SPEAKER_00 (27:12):
They're building a city.
A tech center city near, I thinkin and around Riyadh, to to
house all this capability oncethey bring it online.
SPEAKER_01 (27:27):
So it's very Isn't that just exacerbate the bubble?
SPEAKER_00 (27:31):
Yeah.
I think it I think I think whatit does is it's it says that the
sh there's a shift going on.
Okay, and here's part of theshift.
A few weeks ago, I interviewed aventure capitalist who told me
(27:52):
uh resides in New York, isinvolved in AI, and said, I I
doubt very seriously whether ornot we're going to have another
big player like ChatGPT orClaude or DeGemini or Meta,
whomever, enter the marketplace.
What we kind of see, we what wehave right now is what we have
(28:14):
because it takes a tremendousamount of money, it takes data,
it takes cooling, it takesenergy in order to run these uh
uh in order to run these places,um the data centers.
Uh so what he's shifting his AIto now is applications.
People that are buildingapplications on top of one or on
(28:38):
top of one specific engine.
That's where he sees his moneygoing.
But the question is As long asthey're profitable.
As long as they're profitable,and right now, I don't think any
of them are profitable.
I think they're caught up in theuh Amazon mindset, right?
We can lose money for 10 yearsand then we'll hit it big.
(28:59):
I'm not sure that's gonnahappen.
I'm not sure investors will waitthat long until the money starts
coming back the other way.
I'm not sure, to be honest aboutit.
SPEAKER_01 (29:11):
You turn investing.
Yeah, I was reading an articleabout that this morning.
It's an interesting time andspace we're in, that's for sure.
I would love to keep digginginto this bubble, but we've we
have several other questions Iwant to move through.
SPEAKER_02 (29:27):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (29:27):
So you mentioned that there's you're you you're
you're starting to use multipleAI systems as checks and
balances, kind of meaning likeyou're cross-checking what you
know, figuring out which oneswork gonna work best for this,
that, or the other strategy thatyou have.
Can you share how you actuallyuse AI in your workflow and and
how you ensure it enhancesrather than replaces your
(29:50):
creativity?
SPEAKER_00 (29:52):
Absolutely.
Uh, I can give you a couple ofexamples.
Uh two a c about two weeks ago,I wrote a newsletter uh on to my
LinkedIn feed.
And the newsletter, theorientation of the newsletter
was in response to watching allthe tech layoffs.
(30:13):
All these, I think, over 300,000tech layoffs in the last uh
year.
And I started thinking about,okay, so how do you respond to
this?
I've seen this year in and yearout with different different uh
industries.
You know, we we hire real quickand then we fire even faster.
Okay.
So how do people respond tothat?
(30:35):
What what what can we do?
What can they do that may uhnullify this the the the effect
on them?
So I started thinking about, forwhatever reason, whales.
I started thinking about killerwhales.
I don't know how that thoughtcame into my head, but it did.
(30:55):
And how they act in a pod.
Right?
They they go they they swimtogether, they work together,
they fish together, they takecare of each other, they're a
pod.
So I said, well, that's aninteresting idea.
Let me see what I can do withthat.
Now I had no other inclinationwhatsoever to so I started
(31:16):
feeding that idea into Chat GPT.
And uh because I was looking fora way to help people respond to
these layoffs.
So I started feeding that intoChat GPT.
I'll tell you exactly this thisis the way I did it.
I fed that into Chat GPT.
Chat GPT has I have asubscription, I have the switch
(31:39):
that says share this with therest of uh ChatGPT turned off.
So I've created a wall and ithas my book, it has documents
I've written, it hastranscription files from a
number of different podcastsI've done.
So I've kind of got thatorganized in there, and I fed
that into ChatGPT, so ChatGPThas a real good sense of my
(32:00):
voice and and uh you know what Istand for and what I do.
And I fed the just a basic idea,you know.
This is this is a response tothat, to layoffs.
I'm thinking of whale pods.
Show me something, and he cameback and it was good.
I said, Yeah, yeah, it makessense.
I did some editing.
I said, Okay, give me paragraphtwo.
(32:21):
Normally I work with Chat GPT,give me a paragraph, then give
me another paragraph, give meanother paragraph, and then give
me another paragraph.
And it was good.
It wasn't really it, it didn'thit the sweet spot of how I
wanted to express it.
So I took all the paragraphs, Ithink there were about six
(32:43):
paragraphs for the newsletter.
I recognized that I would haveto break it into two
newsletters, which I did.
And I fed the whole newsletteras ChatGPT had into Claude.
I just took it and said, okay,I'm gonna put it over here in
Claude.
I really like Claude.
(33:04):
I really like the way, theprosaic way Claude takes an idea
and explains it in a wonderfulway, a beautiful language.
I give it the prompt, you know,uh, here's my uh this is the
voice I want to use.
Uh I want to be warm, humorouswhen I can't, where I can't be
professional, those kinds ofthings.
(33:24):
And and Claude came back with anabsolutely beautifully done um
newsletter for both sides.
First side.
Now I had to go in, you know.
People who think you just put itin the Claude or put it in AI
and walk away are out of theirmind.
It took several hours ofediting, changing a few words
(33:49):
here and there.
I don't want to say it this way,I want to say it that way
because that's much more myvoice, those kinds of things.
And Claude then gave me theoutput I used, the final output
I used, which I then dumped intothe AI features of Grammarly,
and went through, and there wassome phrasing that Grammarly
(34:09):
didn't like, and I made thosechanges.
But sometimes I'll say, No, Iwant to keep that.
I like that because that's theway I would say it if I was
standing in front of a fewpeople.
And that's how I wrote thattwo-part newsletter using
different systems.
Um, one other thing, I'llmention this other thing.
In this webinar that I did, Icreated two uh Pixar type
(34:34):
avatars.
I call one Rev for you know, thethrottle up, Rev up.
I thought that was pretty cool.
Rev.
And the other one, a woman namedLexi.
All around the upper 30s kind ofa look, but they're Pixar
characters.
I use Rev to introduce theoverall concept of the webinar,
(34:59):
and I use Lexi to close out thewebinar doing the summation, and
I'm in, you know, and I'm doingthe actual webinar.
I'm on screen with the people.
I use two systems to do that.
I use HeyGen.
I have a subscription, and I useRunway ML.
(35:19):
Runway ML has an amazingcapability, it's not there yet,
because the best it can do foryou is about an eight-second
video, and my videos for thosetwo characters run about a
minute, but eventually I believeRunway ML will get to a minute,
and then it's going to beunbelievable what you can do.
Now, I'll I'll mention thispoint because I think it's
(35:41):
important.
I have a colleague named Chuck.
Chuck's a wonderful speaker,he's an internationally known
speaker.
Uh several weeks ago, I was inChuck's studio in North
Carolina.
He's just merged with anothercompany.
You see the studio, it'sunbelievable.
They must have anywhere betweena half a million to a million
(36:02):
dollars worth of equipment init.
They have a teleprompter that'sthe size of a 32-inch screen.
It's unbelievable.
And Chuck and several cameraslocated in different positions.
Chuck made a perfect avatar ofhimself.
Perfect.
You cannot tell the difference.
SPEAKER_01 (36:23):
With HeyGen?
SPEAKER_00 (36:24):
He he I he I forget what system he used.
I think Hey Jen was part of it.
I think he used uh uh what's theother one called?
Uh I think of it.
It's the it's the wording 11Labs.
11 labs, thank you.
He used 11 labs and other toolsthat he has at his disposal,
along with the people that he'snow working with.
(36:45):
It was perfect.
And Chuck's goal is to putcontent out like that.
You know, here's here's Chuckdoing this thing.
I made the conscious decisionnot to do that.
I made a conscious decision.
I I could probably gin up, ifyou will, an avatar of me.
But I won't do that.
(37:05):
And I don't want to do it forfor this one reason.
I absolutely believe people wantto connect with other people.
Yeah I absolutely believe that.
I want people to know when theysee me on a screen, it's me.
SPEAKER_02 (37:18):
Not an avatar.
SPEAKER_01 (37:19):
The real deal.
SPEAKER_00 (37:20):
It's I'm the real deal.
Here it is.
Good or bad, here it is.
Now I can use the avatars assort of a fun way or a way to
shift energy, if you will, in apresentation to help me make
points about certain thingswhere I can put them in and you
know, uh make a little fun ofmyself using the avatars, if you
(37:43):
will, that kind of a thing.
So that's kind of the way uh uhI see it in in answer to your
question.
SPEAKER_01 (37:51):
Very cool.
W if if people wanted to take alook at Rev and Lexi, uh, where
where could they find them?
SPEAKER_00 (37:58):
Well, right now they're not anywhere.
Okay.
Um they're they're on thewebinar.
Um, but I would very much, youknow, if people want a
demonstration, they can send mean email at John at
throttleupleadership.com, and Iwould be glad to stage a
demonstration for them and showthem how I did it.
SPEAKER_01 (38:19):
Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun, honestly.
Um, a really practical use ofthe technology.
You know, I I've I've definitelythought about Chuck's approach
with creating my own avatar andloading it up with content and
basically doing all thepodcasting for me, and it didn't
(38:39):
feel right.
I'm not there yet.
So I definitely believewholeheartedly that content
creators now and in the futureare going to find their value
driven from who they are andtheir own personal voice and
their the own their ownconnection that they make with
(39:00):
their audience.
And I don't believe that's goingto change just because it's
easier to do it with generativetools.
SPEAKER_00 (39:08):
Right.
One of the women I follow on uhon uh YouTube is a woman by the
name of Julia McCoy.
Julie McCoy is an AI umentrepreneur, uh heads a group
called First Movers, doestraining, uh, and she has an
avatar of herself that she callsDr.
Julia McCoy.
It's brilliant, absolutelybrilliant.
(39:31):
Um, but what you she first ofall, she introduces herself.
The avatar introduces herself asJulia McCoy's avatar.
So she's very upfront with that,which is I like a lot.
But the other thing is Julia'sbeen through, and I don't know
the particulars of it, butJulia's been through some real
health crises over the course ofthe last several months.
(39:51):
My heart goes out to her,really.
And uh I can understand why shewould use the avatar.
SPEAKER_02 (39:57):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (39:58):
I have no problem with it at all because she's
feeding the scripts.
The avatar is doing what itneeds to do to present her
perspective uh every week orevery couple of days on the
changes in AI.
And you know, I'm good withthat.
I will just mention, I will alsomention this.
(40:18):
I'm getting ready to write ahandbook, um, and um, which is
going to be a summation ofprobably 15 podcasts that I've
conducted in different areas,like HR, like AA, leadership in
AI, uh, those kinds of things.
And there'll be a summation, ifyou will, of those uh of those
(40:43):
uh 15 podcasts.
And right now I'm I'm I'm up tonumber 100 140.
But but so I got a lot of I'vegot a lot of content.
And um, but I but I I am goingto put in the beginning of the
handbook what I call a statementof transparency.
(41:03):
And that will be this is yes,this is how I used AI.
This is what AI did, this iswhat I did.
You know, all the theinformation came from raw
transcriptions of me on camerawith a real person, that kind of
thing.
So I think that's I think it'svitally important we tell that
(41:26):
up front and be truthful aboutit.
SPEAKER_01 (41:28):
Yeah, definitely.
So let's let's look ahead a bit,maybe 10 years, um, when AI
potentially is fully integratedinto most organizations.
What do you think the role ofthe human leader looks like?
SPEAKER_00 (41:44):
What a wonderful question.
I've been thinking about this,and I'll explain it this way in
terms of variables andconstants.
Okay, so let's go back to thedawn of the computer age for an
example.
The dawn of the computer age,when people computers were just
coming online in the late 80sand the 90s, people were the
(42:11):
constant, and computers were thevariable.
How people brought computersinto companies changed the way
they did business, made theirbusiness more efficient.
They were, let's just say,computer augmented.
I can remember working in acompany that started using
(42:31):
spreadsheets to cost projects.
Probably one of the first onesto do it.
Okay.
So in those days, let me justsay that again for clarity,
people were the people were theconstant, and computers were the
variable.
Today, computers are theconstant, and people are the
(42:54):
variable.
How people chose to createapplications.
Everybody today has a computer.
Your cell phone is a computer.
So, and and every day, newapplications, whether you're on
Windows, Linux, whether you'reon uh uh uh Mac iOS, people
created applications that werefeatured on each one of those to
(43:18):
do different things, right?
The creativity of the humanstill prevailed.
Now, let's look five to tenyears down the road.
Today, as you and I speak,people are the constant, and AI
is the variable, but in veryshort order, I believe, AI will
(43:43):
become the constant, and peoplewill become the variable.
What this says to me is thecreativity of people will
prevail again, especially if werework the approach, as Darren
(44:04):
Amalagu says, we appro uh reworkthe approach to augmenting
people with AI.
So in the future, when AI isubiquitous as computers have
become, to me, the leader, aperson, the creation of a new
company, the creation of a newapplication will still be
(44:29):
prevailed by the human.
SPEAKER_01 (44:33):
Wow.
That's beautiful.
That's a very positive messageto share.
SPEAKER_00 (44:38):
Yeah, and I mean, let's be honest here.
We don't know what, we don'tknow what that AI system will
look like five or ten yearsright now.
SPEAKER_01 (44:46):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (44:47):
If if we push the hype aside, push it all aside,
say, okay, let's get it out ofthe way just for a minute.
You know, all these investments,billions of dollars
transferring, billions ofdollars inflating stock prices
where nothing in reality hasbeen exchanged yet.
Just worse, we're gonna buy somuch computing power from
(45:10):
Oracle, for example, the bigOracle announcement.
Stock prices went through theroof.
Yeah, 100, another hundredbillion dollars.
So, but what has really changedhands?
What has really been done?
Well, we don't know.
We're all waiting to see.
So again, we just we just haveto let things play out.
(45:32):
Let's see where it really windsup.
Yeah, and when you've got anoble laureate saying, take your
time, you know, let's reallytake a hard look at this.
And a lot of people now, andagain, we go back to the
fatigue, people are pushingback.
I've had enough.
I can't drink from this firehose anymore.
You know, I just need to take abreak.
I think that really sayssomething about how the human
(45:55):
will in the end uh make the bigdifference, right?
unknown (46:00):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (46:01):
Yeah, it's a the there's a big circular
investment strategy that I thinkmost people can't see because
it's so big and staggeringinvestments, and only the
insiders, investment insidersreally know what's going on with
those investments and howthey're playing to the feeding
into the market, if you will.
(46:23):
Right.
And driving up the inflation ofthe of the value stocks these
days.
SPEAKER_00 (46:29):
Well, here's here's the thing.
Let's go back to one of the yourorigin one of your questions
beforehand.
What we see, what we can see isthe mission.
We can see the activities, butit's hard to see what their real
strategy is.
We don't know what the strata,the real in-house strategy is.
(46:51):
We can kind of surmise whatthey're doing.
I mean, if you look at open AI,for example, right?
OpenAI goes out and buys JohnnyIve's company for six point, I
think, two billion dollars.
What is Johnny Ive was thecreator of the Apple products?
(47:13):
So one can say, well, looks likethey're gonna make themselves
some sort of open AI pocketsystem that you can carry around
with you.
We can kind of take a look atthat, but we haven't seen
anything yet.
We're wondering what that lookslike.
Um, I can't think of the name ofthe company, but uh Elon Musk
(47:35):
and uh SpaceX just put down 17billion dollars to buy bandwidth
from uh I can't think of thename of the company, which means
you know he's going to have anincredible capability to use
Starlink in a in a totallydifferent way.
So we don't know what thestrategy is per se.
(47:58):
I don't know.
And um we're just watching theactivities uh play themselves
out more than anything.
SPEAKER_01 (48:05):
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's a lot of incrementalmoves that that these tech
leaders are are making, and theyI think they're grasping at the
market segments in various ways.
Like I think about the roboticsthat Elon Musk is also getting
into, and they're all comingtogether to ensure uh US has the
(48:29):
ability to stay ahead of Chinain its capabilities, and you
know, the first to AGI or ASIare uh are gonna win the future
kind of um ideologies that areseemingly driving their um
investment strategies and andmomentum.
I I think that they're alllooking to create practical use
(48:54):
cases that they they haven'treally quite grasped, but the
one that you mentioned just amoment ago, like putting it into
like a new hand handheld deviceof some sort or a new computer
system, I think that's that'struly practical.
Like I did a podcast a few weeksback about the future of
(49:16):
operating systems and how AI isgonna change them and leverage
all the applications on yoursystem and do more of the
thinking and work for you.
SPEAKER_00 (49:26):
Right?
SPEAKER_01 (49:26):
I think that's where it's going, honestly.
SPEAKER_00 (49:28):
Yeah, and that's why, from my perspective, you
need a new leadership operatingsystem.
Because what that's going to do,it's gonna enable the creative,
it's gonna be enable the abilityto unleash the creative
capability of all the people inthe organization, not just a
(49:50):
few, not just a leader.
Yeah.
And whether they and whether andwhether companies realize this
or not, those companies thatstick to the old traditional
leadership models may very wellfind themselves being dragged
into the undertow of change asit happens every day.
(50:14):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (50:15):
Well, it's not scalable.
Like you said, it's notscalable.
And we need to we need to findscalable systems in order to get
through the adoption rate of thechange and adapt our curr our
our systems and and you knowprocesses around these new
capabilities.
Otherwise, we're we'redefinitely going to fall behind
(50:37):
as organizations and leaders.
SPEAKER_00 (50:39):
Right.
Because you can when you seeleadership as a system, when you
see leadership as uh a group ofaugmented, AI augmented people
working together, that'sscalable.
Yeah.
You can scale that up becausenow everybody has influence.
Everybody can be part of the ofthe movement forward.
(51:02):
But if you have a leader, uh,you know, you're bound by what
that leader uh is capable ofdoing or allows the organization
to do.
SPEAKER_01 (51:11):
Yep.
Great.
Well, I know we're we're comingup on time, so yeah.
So, John, it it's been uh greatdiscussion so far.
I just have one more questionfor you.
If you could redesign leadershipeducation for the 21st century,
what would you start teachingtomorrow?
SPEAKER_00 (51:31):
Well, a couple of things.
First of all, I would start toteach leadership as an influence
relationship and as leadershipas a system.
I would get away fromconcentrating on the individual,
the individual traits orcharacteristics of an
individual.
(51:52):
And that is why I created thelead some simulation.
Okay, I I created the simulationas a learn by doing opportunity.
Immerse people into a simulationexperience where they're given
an issue or a problem.
And this is something I'venoticed.
(52:13):
When you give people a problemor an issue and they have to
work together on it, all theother stuff that separates
people, that makes, you know,that that that causes arguments
dissipates.
Because why?
Now they're focused onsomething, they have to do
something.
And when you say to people, youhave to do something now, you
(52:35):
have to you have to deal withthis issue or problem, the the
the things that we we talk aboutevery day, the human
characteristics sort of getpushed to the side, and people
begin to work togethercollaboratively.
So I believe that the best wayto teach leadership is to put
(52:55):
people into a simulation or in aI like to call it crawl, walk,
run sort of opportunity, wherethey they're given something,
they learn how the processworks, and then in fact, they
they um get a chance to actuallydo leadership under realistic
scenario, and let's see whatthey've got.
Now you've got an opportunity todo some things like a see their
(53:19):
mental models.
Their mental models of how theydo business float to the top.
Now you got something to workwith.
Now you've got something to say.
Wait a minute, this is what yousaid.
Why don't you try doing it thisway?
Or maybe you should ease off onthis and try thinking more about
asking questions rather thanjust trying to tell people what
to do.
Let's see what that does.
(53:40):
Okay, so that to me is reallywhere I have seen changes occur.
So to me, that's really umimportant.
Do I think we can continue withleader development training?
Yeah, I think we can do that.
Okay, but what I really wantpeople to understand and get is
(54:05):
this we talk, I can't tell youhow many times I've talked to
people on my podcast aboutauthenticity or about empathy.
Good things, except when we talkabout authenticity authenticity
or about empathy, we talk aboutthe leader having authenticity
(54:26):
and empathy.
And when that is the case, thoseare traits.
What I want to see is whenauthenticity and empathy becomes
imbued in the group.
In in the system, in the group.
So it goes from being a trait tobeing a value.
(54:50):
This is the value we hold true.
We treat each other in anauthentic way.
We treat each other uh withempathy towards one another.
Now from a trait, it becomes avalue.
And here's the beauty of it a,you can scale it, and B, when
the leader leaves and a newleader shows up, that leader has
(55:13):
to come into the system and bepart of an ongoing system that
values authenticity and empathy.
I think that to me is really,really important, is is and
that's part of the scaling.
Now we've got everybody workingon the issues in the problems.
Now we've got people, a group ofpeople working on strategic
(55:36):
thinking, looking at theproblems and the issues that we
might face, and then we'retaking that and transferring
that to the strategic planners,and they're figuring out how to
spend money to go after that.
And every day, and we kind ofkeep doing this system, and
every day, maybe every 18months, we do a strategic
thinking.
You know, are we lying toourselves here?
What's the truth?
(55:56):
How do we change those kinds ofthings?
So for me, I would, I would, Iwould, you have to add the
practical side of it.
You have to add the idea thatleadership is what people do
together.
And the doing of leadership canbest be taught in an immersive,
(56:18):
simulated environment where it'ssafe to try new things, safe to
play, so they can go out andsay, I really understand now how
this works.
I really understand the mistakesI've made.
I really understand that I needto make a mindset shift.
So for me, that's kind of whereI'm at in terms of leadership
(56:40):
training.
SPEAKER_01 (56:41):
Yeah.
No, it's it's absolute gold.
And I really connected there onthe creating uh an environment,
developing a culture around theleadership skills, and it
requires people to step intothat and and embody that it's um
so much truth in in theauthenticity.
You know, when you when yourecognize uh an authentic
(57:03):
leader, it's it's noticeable.
And there's some something thatuh it's it's really special
about an organization thatallows that to happen.
SPEAKER_00 (57:13):
Yeah.
Let me just say one final wordon on uh if I can.
Yeah.
The engine that runs everyorganization, the engine that
the fuel, let me take that back.
The fuel that runs everyorganization, the fuel that runs
every relationship is trust.
(57:33):
If you have no trust, you havenothing.
You have no relationship.
Now, when people talk abouttrust, here's the thing, one of
the things they miss.
When we talk about trust, weoftentimes talk about the
ability of people to trust theleader, and that the leader has
(57:56):
to trust the people.
But oftentimes what we miss isthat the people have to trust
one another.
That it's a system of trust.
Because if you if one or two ofthe people in a group, let's say
a group of 15, don't trust oneanother, it drags the rest of
(58:18):
the group down.
It's the old car batteryanalogy.
A battery, car battery, is onlyas strong as the weakest cell.
So it's absolutely vital thatmutual trust becomes the mantra
of organizations.
And when you have mutual trust,when you have strong mutual
(58:43):
trust, then you can faceambiguity and doubt very boldly,
because you know thatcollaboration is a tool you can
call upon, that authenticityinside your system of
relationships in anorganization, empathy for one
(59:04):
another, is the value systemthat you use to create the
collaboration to deal with theproblems as they appear.
SPEAKER_01 (59:12):
That's beautiful.
Thank you for the final note.
And John, this has been such aninspiring conversation.
SPEAKER_00 (59:18):
Oh, thank you.
SPEAKER_01 (59:20):
I appreciate you sharing all your insights and
energy with us this morning.
And for everyone listening, youcan find Dr.
John Dentiko's work in his book,Rottle Up: How to Accelerate the
Impact of 21st CenturyLeadership.
And on his Rottle Up Leadershippodcast, which I know I look
forward to listening to.
(59:40):
And as we close, I'll leave youwith the John's challenge.
Don't slow down to survive theAI era.
Roddala, delete it.
Thanks again for tuning in toInspire AI.
This is Jason McGinthy,reminding you to stay curious,
stay bold, and keep leading withmeaning.
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