Over the past two years I’ve spoken with many entrepreneurs, CEOs and technical leaders wondering what to do with AI. I made proposals. I got quite a few of them wrong. While I was reworking them, I began to notice a pattern I hadn’t expected.
I was building solid proposals on the content side. I was getting them wrong because I wasn’t reading the person in front of me. I thought I was talking about AI with an entrepreneur. I was actually talking with an entrepreneur who was feeling enthusiastic, or disoriented, or disappointed, or in control — facing an AI that was still taking shape. Completely different conversational contexts.
With AI, the decision doesn’t come down to the numbers in a business case. It comes down to the posture of the person deciding. The same CEO who approaches an important hire one way approaches this in a completely different way. And almost always, they don’t notice.
It happens because AI had no history when it arrived. The CEO was already a CEO before. The technical leader was already a technical leader. The CFO too. All roles with a track record behind them, with people who’d been there before. With AI, no. Everyone is figuring it out alone.
The posture isn’t chosen. It emerges when instinct speaks before reason. It’s a gut reaction drawing on resonant experiences that may have nothing to do with AI.
I counted them. Seven recurring postures — in those who decide and in those who build the offer:
- The Renaissance Mind.
- The Satisfied.
- The Honestly Disoriented.
- The Quietly Disoriented.
- The Disappointed.
- The Sovereign.
- The Process Thinker.
One is mine. One is probably yours. One belongs to your CFO. We’re all using ours, convinced we’re being objective.
In the next posts, I’ll go through them one by one. A real anecdote, a typical phrase, a blind spot.
Start by asking yourself which one you are.