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This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. The most powerful AI tools don’t just save time; they expand our consideration of what’s possible. These assistants help us consider 5 or 10 times the number of creative options wed otherwise think about. AI tools I consistently rely on Research and analysis Perplexity: Unlike Google’s long list of links, Perplexity delivers concise, citation-backed summaries that work like a presidential brief. This is perfect when you need to quickly understand consumer patterns, industry trends, or a complex topic. NotebookLM (and Claude Projects): Upload your own documents, examples, and data to get personalized AI assistance. That ensures the replies to your prompts are anchored in your own materials and context. Now you can work with huge collections of information more efficiently and creatively. Communication efficiency Letterly and other voice-to-text AI tools like AudioPen and Oasis have transformed how I capture ideas. I call this “bionic dictation” because these tools don’t just transcribe your voice but transform it into organized text. This is particularly powerful for peoplelike mewho think out loud. As you think aloud, your AI assistant acts as an idea mirror, reflecting back to you a coherent summary of your own key points Shortwave: This email tool uses AI to help you find messages using natural language rather than exact keywords. Many of us waste huge amounts of time hunting for messages. Shortwave helps. Multimedia creation Gamma (and Beautiful.ai) Create pro quality presentations without design skills. Spin up slide drafts quickly from a link, a doc, a detailed prompt, or an outline. Experiment with multiple styles quickly & easily. Spend time thinking and strategizing, not fussing with menus. Hypernatural For quick video creation, paste in text, a link to a newsletter or blog post, or give it some text, audio, or video. From virtually any raw material you provide it will create an original video you can revise. Eddie Edit video with simple text prompts. I recently trimmed an hour long workshop to an eight-minute highlight video just by instructing Eddie into what sections were most important using natural language. Descript Edit audio and video without any technical expertise. The AI removes background noise, sound gaps and filler words. And you can customize your project by trimming the transcript just as youd edit any text document. AI tactics that work surprisingly well Reverse interviews Instead of just querying AI, have it interview you. Get the AI to interview you, rather than interviewing it. Give it a little context and what you’re focusing on and what you’re interested in, and then you ask it to interview you to elicit your own insights. This approach helps extract knowledge from yourself, not just from the AI. Sometimes we need that guide to pull ideas out of ourselves. AI-assisted planning AI is particularly helpful for strategic planning. Try this: create a Claude Projector a ChatGPT Projectand detail for your AI assistant your objectives and operating context. Have it help you think through a plan for the next month based on your goals. The benefit is comprehensive thinking. Our planning falls short when we’ve left something out. We’ve forgotten to consider various factors or haven’t fully analyzed how things could go wrong. Identify writing weaknesses Give an AI assistant like Gemini, Copilot, Claude, or ChatGPT text you’ve written, with a prompt asking for specific feedback. For example: Ask for questions your writing should answer but doesnt yet. Prompt for a blind spot or a key point a critic might say youve missed. Tell your AI aid to point out a section of your text thats boring or bland. This approach elevates your work. In this paradigm, your assistant isnt writing for you. It’s giving you objective feedback on your work and helping you strengthen your own eye for edits. Its pushing you to reach a higher standard. This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here.
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Every technological revolution brings with it management change. The rise of automation in the 1980s, for example, led to process reengineering (stripping out unnecessary steps to shorten timelines). Now with the dawn of AI, the next wave of organizational and leadership change is upon us. Ron Carucci, a consultant and researcher on leadership and organizations, and Kathleen Hogan, Microsofts former chief people officer and its newly appointed EVP of the Office of Strategy and Transformation, have identified what they believe are four of the most fundamental shifts that leaders and organizations must consider to be future-ready. Paid subscribers will learn: How to redefine career progression by impact, not rank The most important trait that talent teams need to look for when hiring Why AI will render the org chart a thing of the past The three things Microsoft is looking for from every manager to train future leaders 1. From change management to change readiness Less than a decade ago, best practices in change management involved carefully structured communication and stakeholder plans, phased rollouts with meticulous timelines, and well-resourced implementation strategies. This approach was built on the assumption that leaders knew in advance both the changes they needed to make and the precise destination they wanted to reach. But today, change arrives so quickly that there is often no time to define a fixed endpointlet alone build a road map to get there. The new reality requires a shift from managing change as a project to developing a culture where change-readiness is an everyday capability. To create this shift, leaders must first embrace a change-ready mindsetone that sees change as a continuous state rather than a series of isolated events. This means hiring and developing employees based on their ability to learn and adapt, not just their current expertise. At Microsoft, being a positive pivoter means embracing change as the new norm instead of seeing it as a hardship. This means rewarding adaptability and resilience, shifting away from valuing stabilitykeeping things under controlas the ultimate leadership virtue. Beyond mindset, leaders must also empower employees to actively drive change rather than passively waiting for direction. Rather than managing change top-down, leaders should coach employees to anticipate and shape it. This requires breaking down rigid structures and creating cross-functional teams that identify disruptions early and respond with agility. Finally, organizations must embed change as an everyday practice rather than a temporary initiative. Leaders should normalize experimentation and foster learning from failure. At Microsoft, leaders have been prepared for this under Satya Nadella, where challenging ones fixed mindset is a daily habit. For example, as Microsoft wrestled with how to win in AI, we had to challenge the fixed mindset that we had all the answers. When we shifted to a growth mindset we embraced the opportunity to bring in outside perspectives and ideas. In the last year weve added three new externally hired executives to Satyas leadership team to enable the push into AI. 2. From hierarchical leadership to agile networks In the past, organizations relied on well-defined hierarchies where leadership influence was dictated by reporting lines, and decision-making authority was concentrated at the top. This model created stability, but at the cost of agility, as decisions had to travel up and down a chain of command before action could be taken. In todays fast-moving environment this rigid structure has become a liability. The future demands a shift toward agile, networked leadership, where decision-making is based on expertise, not hierarchy, and teams dynamically form and reform to tackle challenges as they arise. To build this new model of leadership, organizations must move beyond traditional org charts to foster fluid, networked governance structures. One organization Ron consulted with, developed innovation hubs focused on specific product and customer segments. Each cross-functional group was assigned a specific innovation focus, given resources, and empowered to make go-no go decisions on their projects right up until prelaunch. This dramatically reduced the time it took to complete projects because it eliminated relying on hierarchical decision-making for approvals. In one year, they increased their successful product launches by 46%. 3. From leadership as control to leadership as coaching For decades, leadership was synonymous with creating order from chaos. The assumption was that strong leadership meant exerting control over ambiguity. However, today, uncertainty is no longer an occasional disruption, but a constant state. Future-ready leaders must embrace uncertainty and develop coaching mindsets to help employees navigate complexity with confidence. This shift begins with redefining leadership as coaching rather than controlling. Replace rigid performance reviews with real-time feedback that drives continuous improvement. Balance accountability with empathy, ensuring that expectations remain high (with clear measurable goals) while employees feel psychologically safe to take risks, experiment, and grow. Microsoft has declared this year of intensified uncertainty and transformation as the year of the coach. Microsoft has identified three competenciesmodel, coach, careas foundational to managers at all levels. Weve learned candid coaching is care. Role modeling what it means to give thoughtful, clear feedback as well as acknowledging personal shortfalls earns the permission to candidly coach. All people managers will have access to communities with tools and training to improve their coaching skills. They will also be able to exchange feedback. This will be particularly critical as AI agents become a regular part of managerial life. Managers will need to understand how to coach people to harness irreplaceable human assets like relationship building, empathy, and creativity. Equipping leaders with strong coaching skills is essential in this new paradigm. This means training managers to ask the right questions rather than simply providing answers. It also requires setting and exceeding the bar for meeting customers evolving needs. 4. From status as power currency to contribution as impact currency In many organizations, career progression has long been tied to status, measured by titles, reporting structures, team size, and invitations to high-level meetings. Employees have traditionally viewed promotions as the primary means of increasing their impact. But in an era where speed, collaboration, and expertise matter over rank, the future of leadership must be based on influence and contribution, rather than job titles. To create this shift, companies must redefine career growth and progression by rewarding employees for impact rather than hierarchy. Instead of promotions being the primary way to acknowledge high performers, companies should design pathways where employees can expand their influence by leading initiatives, shaping critical decisions, and contributing to strategic problem-solving, regardless of their title. Leaders should invite those with relevant expertise into key discussions, regardless of rank. This also requires rewarding horizontal collaboration, where employees who bridge silos and drive cross-functional innovation are recognized and valued. In one organization transformation, Ron helped a global financial services company redesign how key leadership meetings were handled. Originally, the company invited attendees to the meeting based on their rank. In the new approach, each attendee was assigned a role with clear expectations. Afterwards, everyone in the room was expected to cascade key messages and decisions. This eliminated the entitlement that senior leaders often display when its their turn to join the important meetings. Instead of, I deserve to be here because Im a senior vice president, leaders showed up with a broader understanding of how they could create success together. By centering contribution over hierarchy, organizations will create a culture where the most capable and impactful employees thrive, decision-making is faster, and leadership pipelines are built on merit rather than tenure. As the world of work continues to shift, leaders will do well to guide their organizations toward more adaptive structures that allow leadership to happen at all levels, and enable faster and more creative responses to market opportunities. Its time to leave behind outmoded approaches to leading and organizing human endeavors.
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We are living with a lot of uncertainty right now. There are some economic headwinds, though hiring has remained robust. There are significant legislative changes on the horizon. Ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are creating global tensions. The rise of generative AI has led to concerns about the future of many jobs and industries. The difficulty of predicting the future complicates decision-making for people at every level of an organization from low-level employees who may be angling for a promotion or thinking of a career change to high-level leaders who have to set strategy and select tactics for an entire organization. How can you make good decisions in this environment? Process not outcome The first thing to remember when making decisions in any environment (but particularly when there is a lot of turbulence) is that you have to focus on the process you use to choose rather than whether the outcome is the one you wanted. Begin by thinking about what information is important for the decision. Determine whether there are experts or team members you should consult along the way. Develop a method for combining information in advance if you can. For complex decisions, this process probably requires some tools to help you keep track of the relevant information. Use spreadsheets and dashboards to organize data. Make lists of decision criteria and the weight that information should have in the ultimate choice so that you dont lose track of important factors. Refer to these tools along the way and dont rely only on your memory. Know your risk tolerance Two people faced with the same information and opportunities may not reach the same decision. A big factor you need to consider is your personal or organizational risk tolerance. What makes a decision difficult in uncertain environments is that future outcomes are not known. Even if you have access to all of the relevant information for the choice, there are factors outside of your control that will affect what happens, and you cannot know them in advance. As you lay out your options, they will differ in your estimate of the likelihood of a bad outcome as well as the magnitude of that outcome. Ask yourself how willing and able you are to accept the worst-case scenario. When possible, avoid options where that worst-case is unacceptable. Then, consider the likelihood of that bad outcome. Are you willing to live with the size of that risk? When you are risk averse, you are likely to have a bad emotional experience with decisions that carry a substantial chance of a big downside. Ultimately, you have to live through that decision period. Selecting options that will make you miserable is not a recipe for success. Use data rather than anecdota Data relating to decisions is valuable, because it often provides you with a large number of cases to inform the decision. You may be focused on the number of people getting jobs, or the success of other firms that have pursued a particular strategy. You may also be using data to forecast the future. Despite the value of data, stories you hear are often compelling. Those studies can stick in the mind both because the outcomes from those stories feel salient, and because those stories come along with speculation about why a particular outcome occurred. That explanation can often make the future feel more certain than it really is. As enticing as these anecdotes are, resist the temptation to allow them to have an outsize influence on your decision. If the data are pointing you in one direction, be careful of a single story that is urging you to go in a different direction. When you have reliable data, make sure that it provides a more significant guide to your future actions than a good story. Dont ignore your gut That said, if your decision process is pushing you in a particular direction, but the decision still feels wrong, take a pause. Psychologists distinguish between fast intuitive processes that are sensitive to the statistics of the environment and slow algorithmic processes that work carefully through information. Data-driven decision processes use this slower process, while your intuition is driven by those faster processes affected by the impression created by the instances you have seen in the past. Many times when you make a choice based on data, your intuition is either consistent with that option or doesnt create a strong preference. Sometimes, though, your intuition is opposed to the option the data suggests. In those cases, use the conflict between the data and your gut to pause and think more carefully. Check to see whether there is something missing from the data or whether the process you have used to combine data to reach a decision has led you astray. While you may still choose an option that feels wrong, use that uneasiness as a sign that there should be some additional scrutiny before selecting a course of action. In addition, if the decision is one that can be amended or fixed even after you start on a particular path, use the tension between data and gut as a signal to remain vigilant for something you missed so that you detect problems as soon as they arise.
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