May Substack!

May article: We have AI all wrong.

Oracle recently fired 30,000 people, or 20% of their staff. The layoffs came after billionaire Larry Ellison, posted a 95% net income increase last qtr, nearly a $6 billion gain.

Every tech firm says the cuts are necessary because of their investment in AI. Oracle signed a $300 billion 10-year deal deal with Altman last year. Let’s do the math. Assume that each person averages $150K, then they’ve just cut $4.5 billion in expenses. So. Oracle is spending 30 billion in AI. To fire people, which is known to cut innovation rates because people shut down when under threat. All to supposedly “save” a few billion. Even as they have the money to do both.

That math aint mathing, as my niece would say.

Here’s the tension: If AI can write our emails, analyze data, and generate code, then machines outperform humans on nearly everything we currently measure: speed, productivity, and task completion.

Based on these measures, humans lose. Their jobs. Their dignity. Their worth.

A recent management study shows that AI can help people do 12% more work, 25% faster — but it gets the answers wrong 19% of the time. That’s a telling number. And helps us to understand what we’re all experiencing. We’re optimizing for output instead of what matters.

If businesses value motion and not direction, they’re all acting like Wile E. Coyote, sprinting forward ever faster towards the cliff— only to realize, a beat too late, there’s no ground beneath them.

So if I were in charge of Oracle, you know what I’d do?

I’d value my people. By changing what I measure.

Speed/productivity/and task completion are not accurate measures of how well my people are performing.

But curiosity, competence, and generative thinking are. That’s because they’re tied to the 3 levers of innovation:: access to new and novel ideas, whether those ideas are joined together into real and robust solutions, and whether we’re solving the problems that matter.

I’ve researched and named the 24 intangibles that matter in the AI age. Exactly because of this dilemma that Oracle faced. The wrong measures force the wrong decisions. To fire people rather than invest in them.

Oh, you know what else I’d do? I’d stop giving Altman all my money because it’s a house of cards over there. Altman has never kept any promise he’s ever made, as the New Yorker has reported. And so he’s the one guy I would fire.

3 BY 2

Recommended listens:

1. The Shift Forward with Dr. Cindy Pace: unpacking the trust megaSHIFT from institutional promises to earned trust, credibility, and transparency.

2. Coaching for Leaders with Dave Stachowiak: Why Talent Never Begs.

3. Meg and Amy Show: Why “hiring A-players” limits us.

Recommended books:

1. Our Best Work by Nilofer Merchant

2. Uncompete by Ruchika T. Malhotra

3. How Not to Use AI by Abi Awomosu

May Norm:

CHANGE THE METRICS

Limiting norm: SUCCESS

Leading Indicator: FREEDOM

What Oracle is doing is driven by the metrics it already uses to define success. By those measures, success means faster and more.

Those metrics are rooted in the cost of capital, where people are treated primarily as a cost to be managed rather than as a source of value creation.

If we want this to change, we need new metrics—ones that recognize and reward the intangibles: human insight, creativity, trust, and collaboration. These are the true drivers of our best work.

Events:

5/31 Los Gatos.

I’m speaking on Leadership and specifically chapter 13 of OUR BEST WORK, the harm of servant leadership. While it’s at my home church, the community is invited to attend.

Lunch is going to be provided which is why we need you to RSVP here: https://forms.gle/k94Gh4HdSdJTGM5C9