Rocket Fuel for Some, Standing Still for Others
On widening gaps, leadership consultants discovering AI, and why open source wins on cost.
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Happy Tuesday,
I know it’s the middle of summer…but autumn is getting close, and what better than a few of my predictions for what’s to come in the upcoming months?
1. The gap widens.
The organizations that started early with AI, that have been on this question for a while, that built things, shipped things, and developed capability will come back this autumn with rocket fuel.
This summer’s releases (Fable 5 and ChatGPT 5.6) amplify everything they already have in place. The ones who positioned themselves well didn’t do it by talking about AI. They did it by doing things.
And the distribution right now is wildly uneven. On one end you have all of Silicon Valley going “this is great, let’s go.” The capability in some places is insane. I’ve had glimpses into environments that are fully native in this. Where people just run entire departments and even companies with AI. It’s something else entirely.
On the other end, a lot of organizations are still standing on the platform, stamping their feet or torn between what models to choose, if any, and what should be allowed or not.
This autumn, I think the difference starts showing for real. The ones who did the work will get leverage from it.
We’re about to find out what that leverage looks like.
2. Every leadership consultant has discovered AI.
You can feel this almost everywhere. In PR outlets, on LinkedIn, and in requests that I get for collaborations. Everyone in the traditional leadership space is engaged in this now. The problem is that many of them aren’t practitioners.
Leadership still matters. As we saw a couple of weeks ago, a good manager sits in a decisive position for whether this goes well or not. So, on one hand, it’s great that these leadership consultants are now waking up to the fact that AI is an important and natural part of workplaces. But you need to get practical. You need to explore what’s possible and know the technology, hands-on.
Agencies are reaching out wanting to build capability. Great, of course. But this technology has been around for almost four years. Now you start?
If you are considering buying AI + leadership courses during this fall, be very stringent around their AI capabilities. What have they done? What have they built? Do they understand what’s possible and what’s not possible? Always happy to help with second opinions here; just reach out, and I’ll help you for free. This is important.
(How can I write this, for free? Won’t I get spammed with requests? No, I won’t because most of you won’t reach out even if you should…)
3. Cost drives open source.
Token cost stays in focus. The trend is open source, driven by the hunt for the lowest possible cost. Locking yourself into a single model is not a great idea. Spread your bets.
My most advanced clients have built their own harness around this and could now swap to Kimi K3 the day it drops. Big upfront investment in hardware. But as open source catches up as it has this summer, running it gets cheap.
One more thing. If you’re stuck in Microsoft with Copilot at work, you’re limited. I like Microsoft, they do a lot of good work. But you can’t practice on what’s happening outside that wall.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Buy your own computer. Get your own license on ChatGPT or Claude. It’s probably the best career investment you’ll make this half year. Not doing it is professional negligence, and that’s not hyping it; it’s just what it is.
Because how are you supposed to lead an organization if you don’t understand the capability that exists in the world right now?
Those are the three big ones, what did I miss?