The Rise of the Leader-Doer

This post was previously published on our Substack. Follow us at: https://substack.com/@newstateu

AI has created a remarkable environment for businesses to reinvent themselves around. This isn’t just finding efficiencies, it’s enabling us to fundamentally change how we organize ourselves for impact. 

When a lot of folks think of AI, they think that “efficiency” means job losses, restructuring, errors and loss of humanity. They also see the amazing possibilities of what AI could mean for accelerating work and productivity.

Both of these things are true.

Personally, I see opportunity. For businesses, and for higher ed, to think fundamentally differently about how we work to have an impact.

What’s impact? For each organization it’s different. For me, it’s the career outcomes of students in the world in terms of not only providing a sustaining wage for their families, but for the ability to get ahead. For them to have a better life than their parents, for us to collectively continue an upward trajectory of sustainable growth for individuals and families. A strong country is predicated on a strong middle class.

To have impact, you must develop a relentless focus.

That’s where the rise of the leader-doer comes in.

What is a leader-doer? A leader-doer is someone who is hands-on keyboard, using AI not just to write things, but to create things, to configure things, to design things.

Our entire team has to be in the systems, actually building, configuring, analyzing, creating bots, directing AI. We are choreographers within the system. 

Our impact is designed to be the outcomes of our students, not the size of our team.

Our entire business is based on removing friction, and to do that you need to focus on simplicity. To create simplicity can be surprisingly mentally complex. You have to design carefully, be thoughtful about long-term sustainability, and focus on what matters most.

I have found the Lean Six Sigma mindset to be incredibly helpful here. Finding points of friction and reducing them. Looking at the data critically and thoroughly. Avoiding things that don’t add value at all costs. 

So, the challenge questions for today - if you use a CRM, could you create a workflow if you needed to? If you use social media, could you update your posts with images and text real-time if needed? Could you create a gif in Canva, filter it, and swap it out in under 10 minutes? If you have courses, could you build and input a video in the right course? If you have integrations, could you go in and diagnose a problem? Could you personally update your website?

These are just examples. But if you’re planning on leading lean, you need to know enough about how to work with AI in each of these circumstances to be wickedly efficient and effective. You have to be able to direct the use of your bots and agents and have foundational, hands-on keyboard skills to go in and do the thing.

Let’s do the thing. Let’s go.