Seven postures facing AI: the Quietly Disoriented.
The twin of the Honestly Disoriented. Same disorientation, opposite posture.
On a plane, sitting next to me: a prominent entrepreneur from the investment world. He spends half an hour explaining how AI should work inside a company. Principles, culture, risks. Some of it is cliché, some of it is just wrong. He says it all with authority, because authority is something he has. Then he asks me to come and work with his company, because his people still don’t know how to move. But he doesn’t introduce me to his first line — the people who should be moving and don’t know how. He hands me off to the intern who “already gets it a bit,” to handle things and report back. He’ll listen to the results.
The same not-knowing as the Honestly Disoriented. Except the first one declares it, and this one covers it with a language of authority. And faced with something they don’t master — and can’t admit they don’t master — they make the only move that protects them: they delegate.
This isn’t new to AI. It’s always happened, with every wave of innovation. Those who lead, placed on unfamiliar ground, push not just the work downward, but the decision itself. To avoid exposure, they hand strategic choices to people too junior to make them.
That’s where the blind spot is. The choices that matter — the key, delicate ones — require real study and real depth before deciding. And study, on a topic that carries weight, can’t be delegated. You delegate execution, not the understanding you need in order to choose. Whoever lets go of that has already let go of the wheel.
A way out does exist. Learning can be bought; you can ask to be guided toward understanding until the decision genuinely becomes yours. But to do that, you have to say it out loud: “On this, I don’t yet know enough.” And that’s exactly the phrase the posture forbids.
To avoid saying “I don’t know,” they delegate the decision. But the decision was the one thing they couldn’t delegate.
P.S. In the next article: the Disappointed. The one who already tried, got burned, and no longer knows who to trust.