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We’re Racing Toward A Cliff

We’re Racing Toward A Cliff
You can be great at your job and still fall behind—fast—if you ignore the way AI is reshaping how work gets done.


I was recently part of a roundtable discussion about AI workflows. I asked a tenured manager on the account team how he was using AI.

“I don’t use it at all.”

And here’s the thing: he’s a great manager. One of our best. He runs $70–80 million in business a year. He knows the company cold. He knows the products, the clients, the org chart. People trust him. He’s calm under pressure. He gets things done.

But if he doesn’t change something soon, he’s going to fall off a cliff.

A shipping company that still uses horses

Imagine starting a shipping company in 2025.

You buy horses.

You hire stablehands.

You carefully plan routes and tack and delivery schedules.

It might be beautifully run.

It might deliver every package with a handwritten thank-you note.

It might be _the best horse-based logistics company in America_.

But it can’t compete with FedEx.

Because no matter how good your people are, your tools still matter.

That’s the AI Cliff

Today, it just looks that manager is busy. His team is busy. Everyone’s focused on _the work_ and getting to the end of the week/month/quarter. Racing toward the horizon line, not realizing the road is about to disappear under their feet.

Meanwhile, down the hall or across the org chart, someone else is:

  • writing 5x faster with LLMs
  • analyzing accounts in half the time
  • generating daily summaries, templates, and outreach with a single prompt

They’re building a personal AI assistant for every part of their role.

They’re training themselves to think in loops and systems.

They’re spending time _compounding_.

And when the moment comes that clients expect faster turnaround, tighter insights, more predictive strategies, and AI-native teams…

There won’t be enough time to catch up.

The fix: curiosity, not mastery

Leaders in any org should be setting the tone and helping their teams get prepared. Change can be scary and hard, sure. But it only gets scarier and harder the longer we wait to get started. So I told that manager:

You don’t need to be an AI expert.

You don’t need to be vibe coding every day.

But if you’re not _playing_ with these tools—if you’re not trying small things and seeing what sticks—you’re not preparing. You’re pretending the road doesn’t end.

You are ignoring the biggest force for technological change since the internet.

Try tools. Test prompts. Automate something small. Build loops.

Because this isn’t about having all the answers.

It’s about _not pretending the road doesn’t end_.

Bottom line:

You don’t need to build the plane.

You just need to get on board.