The Article That Stopped Me in My Tracks
- Mar 4
- 3 min read
I read a lot. Articles, blogs, reports. It's part of how I get inspired and think through what's coming next for the business, the team, and myself.
Most of it I skim. Some of it I save. Very rarely does something actually stop me. This one stopped me.
It's called Something Big Is Happening, written by Matt Shumer, a founder and investor who has spent six years building in the AI space. He wrote it not for the tech community, but for his family and friends. The people in his life who keep asking him what's really going on with AI and getting a version of the truth that he admits wasn't honest enough.
I'm recommending it to you for the same reason he wrote it.
Why I'm Sharing It
I'm not an AI alarmist. I'm not someone who doomscrolls tech articles or thinks every new tool is going to change everything. I run a company. I care about outcomes, about my team, about building something real.
But this piece isn't hype. It's a first-person account from someone who has watched AI transform his own job in real time. Not theoretically, not eventually, but in the last few months. And he's now reckoning with what that means for everyone else.
The line that hit me hardest: he describes the moment he realized AI wasn't just helping him do his job anymore. It was doing his job. Better than he would have done it. Without corrections.
That's not a prediction. That's a Tuesday.
What It Made Me Think About as a Leader
I sat with this article for a while before I decided to share it. First with my executive team, then with other employees, then with friends. I was timid to blast it off because I wanted to be honest with myself about what it means for my company, for my team, and for how I lead.
A few things crystallized for me.
The people who are ahead are the ones paying attention. Shumer describes a managing partner at a major law firm who spends hours every day using AI. Not because it's interesting, but because it works. He's not panicking. He's positioning. That distinction matters. The leaders I respect aren't reacting to this. They're exploring it with genuine curiosity and making real decisions based on what they find.
"I tried it and it wasn't that good" is no longer a valid exit ramp. If your last real experience with AI was 2023 or even early 2024, you tried a fundamentally different technology than what exists today. That's not a small gap. Shumer compares it to evaluating smartphones by using a flip phone. I think that's fair. The honest move is to try it again, seriously, with the current tools.
This is a leadership conversation, not just a technology conversation. The people on my team are going to be affected by this whether or not we talk about it. The question isn't whether to address it. It's whether we do it proactively and thoughtfully, or reactively and late. I'd rather be the kind of leader who names what's happening, sits in the uncertainty with my team, and figures out what it means for us together. That's not naive. That's the job.
A Note on What It Doesn't Answer
I want to be clear: reading this article didn't give me a roadmap. It doesn't tell you what to do. It doesn't have a tidy takeaway or a five-step plan.
What it does is close the gap between what most people think is happening and what is actually happening. And I think that gap, the gap between public perception and current reality as Shumer puts it, is genuinely dangerous if you're a leader making decisions about your team, your company, or your own career.
You don't have to agree with everything he says. I didn't. But I think you should read it, sit with it, and let yourself take it seriously.
Because the leaders who will navigate this well aren't the ones who figured it out after the fact. They're the ones who looked up early enough to make a thoughtful choice.
What's your honest reaction to where AI is right now? I'd genuinely love to know what you're seeing from where you sit.
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