The AI Recommended Option Three. I Killed It.
AI now does eighty percent of a senior leader's analysis in ninety seconds. The other twenty percent is the job.
Last year I watched AI rebuild a board strategy memo in about ninety seconds.
It was the kind of memo I would have given two days of my life to. Same data. Same patterns. The same three options I would have landed on.
Then it recommended option three. Cut headcount by 12 percent and improve the margin. It was the cleanest one on paper.
This was a live decision, headed to a real board.
I killed it.
What the model could not see
The data was not wrong. The margin math worked.
What the memo did not answer was who would do the work. A cut like that does not remove the work. It moves it onto the people who stay, and there was no reasonable way to distribute it.
I knew what that looks like, because I had lived it. I had watched a team exactly like that one fracture under exactly that kind of pressure. Our revenue started slipping. New product releases fell behind. I had seen what it cost, and I knew this particular group could not survive it.
The model could not know that. It has never had to live with the result of its own recommendation.
The model had the patterns. It did not have the scar.
The board pushed back
The board wanted the margin. They pushed back.
So we compromised. Instead of a 12 percent cut, we kept backfills to a minimum and put automation in place to handle routine tasks.
The answer was not anti-automation. Automation was part of it.
At first there was grumbling about leaving open headcount unfilled. Then we talked through the realities with the team. They leaned into making it work.
We increased margin by 15 percent. That was beyond the original goal.
Everyone won.
The eighty and the twenty
The machine got eighty percent of the way there in ninety seconds. That eighty percent used to take me two days.
So what is the twenty percent?
It is not knowledge. It is consequence. It is the judgment that only forms when you have lived with what it costs to get something wrong, and then done the work to get yourself right.
That cannot be automated. It was also the only part of that memo the machine could not write.
Most leaders cannot name their 20%
Most senior leaders have never had to say what their twenty percent is. Nobody has ever seriously questioned their judgment.
AI is questioning it now. Without malice and without waiting for anyone to be ready.
AI is not coming for your title. Not yet. But it is coming for the judgment monopoly. The belief that everything you bring is irreplaceable.
Some of what you bring can now be replaced. The machine already has the pattern recognition. It has most of the analysis too.
What it does not have is what you lived through. That part is yours. But you have to know which part is which.
Seniority makes that harder. After decades of being trusted, past relevance feels like a guarantee of future relevance. It is not. Your track record becomes a line of credit, and you draw on it without noticing the account is running low.
Run the test this week
Take the last major recommendation you made. Put the same inputs you worked from into an AI tool your company has cleared for that material. Let it build its own version.
Then answer three questions in writing.
Where did it match you?
Where would you overrule it?
What have you seen that it has not?
The first answer is your eighty percent. It is no longer scarce. The third answer is your twenty percent. It is what you are paid for now.
If you cannot find a single place where you would overrule it, that is the finding. On that decision, you added nothing the machine could not.
Experience is not immunity
Experience still matters. It matters profoundly, but it is not immunity.
Every leader I have watched lose their relevance thought they were the exception. They assumed their track record would protect them. It did not.
The leaders who matter most in the next decade will audit their own relevance before the organization or the technology does it for them.
I found my twenty percent in option three. Where is yours?
About me: I love working with leaders to navigate transformation within their organizations. Let me know how I can help you at karengilhooly@karengilhooly.com.
