I was thinking about the Accenture and Walmart news on AI and jobs. It reminded me of a letter Hunter S. Thompson wrote a friend reminding him the importance of purpose in our work.

For power users, people are starting to “sound” like AI IRL and studies find that we’re losing our creativity and critical thinking the more we transfer brain power to gen AI.

We must have purpose in AI transformation and how we work with AI and agents. We cannot lose sight of human potential as we automate work. We must not lose the human in how we design work toward outcomes. We must make the outcomes, meaningful, to the business, and the recipients and beneficiaries of those outcomes. Otherwise, our work and unique value starts to become the next em dash.

“…we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal. In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires— including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter.”

There is something to be said about those who minimize work and those that maximize outputs and experiences to the beneficiaries of them. This video is a barometer for executives to decide on which side of transformation they want to be measured.

As humans, we sometimes, may too often, like to hit the easy button. But it’s short term gains over long term viability. We compete for the moment and not the future. Ironically, our fate isn’t just in the hands of AI and how leaders see the future of an AI workforce, but also how we shape our own destinies. Research already shows that we may already offload too much of our thinking and communication skills to AI vs. collaborating with it to do what was previously impossible.

In 2022, Airbnb was considering massive layoffs due to a sharp drop in bookings. Serving as a personal mentor to CEO Brian Chesky, Apple’s Jony Ive shared a long-term perspective as he weighed the cuts.

“You aren’t going to cut your way to innovation,” he told Chesky.

The same is true with AI business transformation.

In the end, you can’t automate your way to innovation. 💡

If all you do is aim to scale what you did yesterday, you miss the opportunity for people and AI to collaborate toward achieving what was impossible yesterday, unlocking net new value creation and growth. The smart move is to balance both paths.