AI After 50 - Episode #9 - AI Leadership: 3 Skills That Will Set You Apart

AI After 50 — Episode #9 - "Three Skills That Will Set You Apart as an AI Leader"

Show Notes

"Three Skills That Will Set You Apart as an AI Leader"

Episode Number: 9 

Recorded: Saturday, March 14, 2026 

Hosts: Mark Tennant & John Paganini

Episode Summary:

What separates a leader who talks about AI from one who actually leads it inside their organization? In Episode 9, Mark and John break down the three skills every leader needs to develop right now — starting with where John just spent the week: the HIMSS National Conference in Las Vegas, where 24,000 healthcare IT professionals gathered and AI governance, patient outcomes, and human-centered AI were the dominant themes.

From the conference floor to your desk, this episode gives you the practical starting points: what to learn first, what to understand about AI capabilities, and how to move from basic use to real organizational impact.

Key Takeaways:

1. AI is already in your organization — with or without a strategy. According to a 2026 AMA poll, 81% of US physicians report using AI. A Gallup poll shows nearly 50% of public sector employees use it regularly. Your people are using these tools now. The question is whether leadership is guiding that or not.
2. AI literacy is the foundation — but fluency is the goal. Understanding how to use a tool is the mechanics. Knowing how AI can support human judgment and act as a thought partner is where the real value lives.
3. Most people dramatically underestimate what these models can do. The capabilities have advanced far beyond writing emails. Deep research, agentic workflows, multi-step automation — leaders who understand this have a real competitive edge.
4. The human in the loop is non-negotiable. From the HIMSS conference floor to your boardroom: the message resonating across industries is that AI amplifies human judgment — it does not replace it.

The Three Skills:

Skill 1 — AI Literacy: Make It Priority Number One

Start here. Understand what AI can do at a foundational level. Host lunch-and-learns. Identify your internal AI champions. Give people tools — and the training to go with them. Organizations that deploy tools without training find no value. Literacy across the organization, led from the top, is the foundation everything else is built on.

Skill 2 — Understand What These Models Are Actually Capable Of

Most people think AI is a glorified Google search or an email writing tool. It is far more than that. Large language models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) can conduct deep research, build workflows, analyze complex documents, and increasingly — through agentic AI — manage multi-step processes in the background without constant human direction. Leaders who understand the real capability landscape make better decisions about where and how to deploy AI.

Skill 3 — Advanced AI Literacy: Use Cases and What's Worked

Once you understand the basics, start mapping AI capabilities to real business problems. Onboarding. Training. Sales and marketing. Operations. Find out what's worked in other organizations and apply it to yours. Move beyond random prompts toward intentional, structured use. This is where AI literacy becomes organizational value.

From the HIMSS Conference — John's Highlights

• 160,000 global HIMSS members; approximately 24,000 attended the conference with hundreds of vendors
• AI governance, patient outcomes, and ethical AI were dominant themes
• Strong consensus: AI must have a human in the loop at all stages — especially in clinical settings
• "This is the year of the patient" — patients now have direct access to AI tools to monitor and manage their own health, with smart devices feeding real-time data into clinical conversations
• 81% of US physicians are now using AI (2026 AMA Physician Survey on Augmented Intelligence) — primarily for note summarization, medical research, discharge instructions, billing codes, and chart documentation

Tool Spotlight: NotebookLM

Google's NotebookLM was discussed as a standout tool for organizing and synthesizing conference materials. Key points:

• Free to use at notebooklm.google.com — full access included with Google Workspace accounts
• You feed it your own documents, PDFs, and research; it answers questions and creates outputs only from those sources
• Reduces hallucination significantly because it works from what you give it
• Outputs include: summaries, podcasts, mind maps, infographics, PowerPoint slides, and (new) video
• As AI models improve over time, NotebookLM improves with them — your existing projects become more powerful automatically

John's use case from HIMSS: Fed conference session PDFs into NotebookLM, then used it to summarize, organize, and synthesize five days of content into usable insights.

Your One Move This Week

Pick one AI platform. ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, or Claude and commit to it for six weeks. Pay for the full version ($20/month). Use it every day. Break it. Build with it. Make it part of your daily workflow. That firsthand experience is what turns AI literacy into AI fluency, and it's what makes you credible when you bring it into your organization.

Coming Up Next

Episode #10: Which AI platform is right for your organization? Mark and John will highlight the major platforms, what each one does best, and how to make the right choice for your specific needs.

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Website: AIAfter50.com

⚠️ HUMAN IN THE LOOP: Reviewed for accuracy before publishing. AI After 50 | Episode 9 | Show Notes | March 2026

Creators and Guests

Editor

John Paganini

A technology strategist, entrepreneur, and AI advocate with a career spanning healthcare, software development, and digital innovation. As the founder of Paguar Informatics and CEO of CrewTracker Software, he has led pioneering efforts in operational efficiency, AI-driven platforms, and industry-focused SaaS solutions. His work bridges technical expertise with practical business impact, helping organizations harness the power of emerging technology. John’s vision is to create sustainable value through purposeful innovation, education, and community leadership.

What is AI After 50?

Created for professionals over 50, 'AI After 50' is your place to start, a place where we'll all learn together.
Join other professionals in their 50s and 60's and discover how to blend your talents with an understanding of AI.
Become that asset within your company, or organization.
'AI Over 50' is not about replacing your decades of experience - it's about making it your competitive advantage.
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New episodes every Monday.

John: 00:00

How important it is to keep the human in the loop at all times. That is just resonating with me more than ever. And it was so comforting in many ways to be around thousands and thousands of people who also believe in that importance. We're not getting rid of the human at all.

Paula Balisch: 00:22

Welcome to AI After 50, the podcast for experienced professionals who wanna keep learning and stay effective at work. Each week, Mark Tennant and John Paganini Paganini show you how to use AI in practical, everyday ways so it becomes part of how you think, plan, and get work done. If you're 50 and still working, this show helps you move forward with confidence.

Mark: 00:44

Well, hey there, everyone. Welcome back. This is AI After 50. Mark and John back with you. How are you today?

Mark: 00:51

This is episode number nine. We're recording this on Saturday, 03/14/2026, and John is just fresh back from Las Vegas. We're gonna talk about that in a minute, and we're gonna visit a little bit about what we've been doing and talk about this week's topic, which is the three skills that you need that will set you apart as an AI leader within your organization or company. So we would like to say that, first of all, would love to have you subscribe to the podcast and also subscribe to our show notes. We take everything we've talked about here in the podcast.

Mark: 01:23

We distill those down into some show notes that we hope are valuable and usable for you. And then also we have premium show notes where we go a little bit more beyond what we talk about here in the podcast because we only have so much time and it still can add value for you and your organization. So we invite you to do that. The description will be part of where you see the description of whatever podcast platform you are on. So, John, I'd love to hear about what happened with you in Las Vegas this week and out of the HIMSS National Convention.

Mark: 01:58

It's an annual event. Tell us about what you went to and, and what your week was like.

John: 02:03

Week was a busy week, Mark, and I won't give the cliche, you know, what happens in Vegas because it's actually, for me, it's quite the opposite because all of the information, that was acquired and learned and doing deep dives on during that five days has been assimilated. So one aspect of that is taking all the information and there's a lot of PDFs that come out of the sessions and education sessions. And this is a purely healthcare IT conference, all things health IT. So the goal of the conference in a way, the goal of HIMSS in a sense is as a global convener of healthcare individuals that are focused on IT heavily. 160,000 people all over the world coming, you know, and the conference probably has about 24,000 people attending with hundreds of vendors.

John: 02:56

So it's quite interesting environment and the focus of course is heavy AI now, cloud, cybersecurity, what's going on with regard to systems of record, the medical records and all the tools and vendors that support the medical record in the interest, of course, for better patient outcomes and operational efficiencies. I got to tell you, it's pretty exciting what's going on out there, but heavy, heavy AI and how important AI is with leadership and governing the AI and making sure all the right steps and procedures are taken before an AI solution is brought into the enterprise and shared among not only the clinicians but being used also with the patients as well. Adding a level of comfort, if you will, that organizations recognize the importance of governance and implementation and validation and adding an ethical side to it with this course transparency. And there is always, always, always a human in the loop or human in the middle. And I think that message just resounds throughout the industry that we're not doing AI just for AI's sake.

John: 04:21

We're looking at the business problem. We're seeing if AI is a solution. And then, of course, we're considering, is this part of our overall AI strategy, much less business strategy, and then doing the proper steps to bring it into the organization.

Mark: 04:35

Would you say that was your biggest takeaway?

John: 04:37

No, takeaways, takeaways that were the biggest. It's so hard to say, but where I get excited, Mark, is the and I said this to somebody, and I think this is the year of the patient. And what do I mean by that? This is the, you know, the patient really is the one who owns and controls their medical information ultimately because it's so important. And now that the patients have access to these AI tools that can help them determine and evaluate their own health based on whatever, including watch, you know, the smartwatches and everything else, This is the year that the patient and the clinicians collaborate together with these tools to really advance their health.

Mark: 05:26

And, you know, speaking of the tools, a new AMA poll just came out 2026, the physician survey on augmented intelligence. This surprised me, and I just came out this week and, and I'm surprised maybe they didn't talk about it much. Maybe they did at such a big conference, but eighty one percent of US physicians report they're using AI now. And really what they're using it for, they're summarizing their conversations, their medical research, standards of care. They create the discharge instructions for when you're in the clinic and, you know, from take homes.

Mark: 05:57

Their notes, as I said, documenting billing codes, they do charts, the visiting notes and those types of things. And then also the Gallup poll is now saying almost 50% of public employees are using it with, you know, anywhere between 2528% of the people using it frequently. And in private sectors, the numbers are almost about the same. So I guess what we're saying here from a leadership standpoint, stuff's being used in your organization. People are using it inside for their daily work, and there's not really any real structured training.

Mark: 06:28

And I think this is another direction where a lot of leaders need to go. And, you know, as you said before, we're not using AI just for AI sake alone, but really asking the questions, should we use it? The answer is probably yes. And where and how do we do it responsibly?

John: 06:43

Yeah, Mark, you brought up an interesting, aspect, which is not only applicable to healthcare, of course, but it's, you know, we talk about AI literacy, but the next step after literacy is actually fluency so that you can master it and, you know, around a human centered approach to it. So organizations really should be focused on this from the top down, from the bottom up, however you're going to do it and implement it. The entire organization has to be on board with using AI in the ways that make sense in their particular job role. And that is a human AI collaboration between the two where you're just empowered to use it in the right ways, of course.

Mark: 07:32

People think, they think though that, you know, when they talk about, at least some of the folks I speak with, they, they think it's a lot more complicated to start adopting it. And it depends on the size of the company, depends on your mission, depend on what you do. But the first place to start, especially in a leadership role, is make AI literacy the number one priority for yourself. Yep. And being able to understand what it could do, have lunch and learns, those types of things, you know, bring the internal people together.

Mark: 07:58

These could be your champions of AI, and how you're gonna roll it out, what tools you're going to use. These are discussions you have to have at your organization, and what tool is the best one to use. But I think across the board, one of the first skills to really validate yourself as being that AI leader is is just AI literacy and promote it across the company. So everybody has a good understanding of it. And it's only going to help because you start giving people tools and we've seen this before with big companies over the last year or two, they give the tools, okay, use these things with no training, and then they don't find any value in it.

Mark: 08:31

So it's just adopt that literacy, provide that training, and lead from the top down. I think that's kind of what we're saying here for skill number one.

John: 08:39

Yeah, Mark. And just to close on that, knowing the tool itself and how to use it, that in many ways is the mechanics of it. You know, if you're using one of the Microsoft tool or Google tool, you know how to click file print, and that's the mechanics of it. But it's really knowing how AI can support the human judgment in a sense and be your thought partner along the way, along that journey. That's where the power comes in.

John: 09:07

So once you get over the mechanics, it is how do I drive this car, Then you know, then you're on your journey to your whatever that destination is.

Mark: 09:15

And I think that dovetails into skill number two. You have to understand, especially from a leadership standpoint and really anybody, what these large language models can do. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, the list goes on. Most people think it's a glorified Google or it just helps you write really good emails and maybe write a good, you know, paper or two and help you with those types of things. But just the capabilities of these models and what they can do, And especially now how far advanced we've come since November, this agentic AI, where agents are doing the work and managing these workflows in the background.

Mark: 09:50

Don't wanna get ahead of ourselves too much, but just understand this stuff can do this now. The deep research capabilities are just it's unbelievable. And, again, a lot of people know what these AI things can do based on mainstream media, but, you know, understanding what they can really, really can do and how it can help is, I think, skill number two.

John: 10:10

Yeah, especially, Mark, the agentic aspect of that is really This is also the year of the agentic AI really becomes embedded into our everyday AI life and productivity. An example of that would be a trip planner, having to plan the trip and finding the flights and the hotels and putting that itinerary together, or maybe even just summarizing all your emails in your inbox. So there's many, many personal things, as well as professional things that these, these Agenetic AIs are gonna help us with.

Mark: 10:45

Our workflow, and we'll share this with you in the coming weeks. We're gonna take our workflow here for the podcast. A lot of it goes into it. A lot of research, a lot to dos, creating the script, creating the show notes. I'm going to spin up an agent, John.

Mark: 10:59

Yeah. And we're gonna small, that's gonna take care of that. And people go, well, you know how to code maybe and do all that stuff. I don't know how to code. You right now, no, you don't have to.

Mark: 11:08

The best thing you can do right now with many of these things is you just tell it what outcome, what are you looking for? What do you, what do you want it to do? You'll have a conversation back and forth and it will write that code for you and it'll spin that agent or that workflow up for you. Again, getting a little ahead of ourselves in some ways, because people might be thinking like, what in the world are you guys talking about? But just know that that capability is here and it's gonna be here to stay.

Mark: 11:34

And especially skill number three, and this is where you had mentioned before, John, it's just not about AI. It's really about working with these tools and it's advanced AI literacy, if you will. Once you understand the basics, once you're talking to them, once you're having those conversations, it it does, inspire ideas. At least it did for me when I first started doing that. And I know for you too, John, when we go back and forth and talk like, oh my gosh, we just found out about this capability and, you know, we do something about it and we start working with these tools.

Mark: 12:01

So advanced use cases, what's worked and you know, that that stuff is certainly searchable, but we've found a few things that we've done And it's really, you have to get beyond that simple prompt in getting an answer. So you gotta think about how you can bring it in. Could it be with onboarding? Could it be with training, sales and marketing? And that's advanced literacy mapping capabilities and those types of things, not just asking random questions.

Mark: 12:29

And I think we encourage that because a lot of times it's fun to talk to these things and getting some ideas and being inspired.

John: 12:37

I have two examples, Mark, and one of them data and information that was generated from this conference. You feed those into notebook.lm and then you say, summarize all this in a PowerPoint or a mind map or even a podcast. And it's just amazing how it can really make that learning experience enhanced and provide you the information you're looking for. Another example of being creative is I was with a fellow board member at the show and he had purchased this tool and it's called Plaud dot ai. And it just records the session by voice with the voice recording and then it feeds it into a tool that summarizes it, provides the key insights and all that.

John: 13:26

And I said, I wonder if I could do that with the tools that I have, that being a phone and ChatGPT. So I asked ChatGPT how can we make this same tool better in a sense? And so it says, well, let's build a shortcut. And the shortcut uses the voice recorder on the iPhone. Then it feeds it automatically into a project I created in ChatGPT that actually does all of those things and produces amazing results out of the session's transcript.

Mark: 13:58

Wow.

John: 13:59

So pretty cost effective and creative. So that's just an example of saying, how can we accomplish X? How can we perform a task like this? Want to capture all this information. And then that got fed into NotebookLM.

John: 14:12

So wow, good stuff.

Mark: 14:14

Explain NotebookLM because you're using it now and people have never heard of it. It's a Google product.

John: 14:20

It is. And I actually met with Google there to talk a little bit more about the power of NotebookLM. And, you know, of course, as you can imagine, a lot of Google engineers are using it. It's a very important tool in their mix. And surprisingly, it was asked at one of the sessions.

John: 14:36

The guy said, raise your hand if you're using NotebookLN. And this is a session maybe five six hundred people, maybe 10 people raise their hand. So I was surprised how much it is not yet proliferated. But regardless, the tool, you just give it the information and it's very limited in its search because whatever you give it is gonna output results from just that information unless you're So just if you feed it 20 documents and you ask it questions, it stays within that domain in a sense. And from there, you could build podcasts, you could build mind maps, you could build infographics, you could build PowerPoints.

John: 15:20

And they're also a new tool for videos. The output of that information is quite illustrative and showing you exactly what it is you're looking for.

Mark: 15:33

You know, with notebook LM, what I found how it's nice and you had mentioned it just it just is using the sources that you give it to be able to answer your questions and create, you know, do the different tasks you're asking it to do. Since it only works off the source documents, it doesn't hallucinate as much. I mean, you're giving it the information you want it and to think over and those types of things. And it is great for that. And, you know, you could take one notebook LM and it could be good for years.

Mark: 16:02

And what's nice about it is it, as the models get better and as AI gets better, so does the tool, Google NotebookLM. Exactly.

John: 16:11

And you can add more information to it, right? So you still got the core pieces of information. So everything keeps improving over time in that particular project.

Mark: 16:20

So notebooklm.com, I believe is the URL for it. And the free version, just try that out. But if you're in Google Workspace or if you have a Google Workspace account in your organization, you probably have the full access to it right now. And again, you probably don't even know about it. And so that takes us down to like, should people do as a leader?

Mark: 16:40

Where do you go? Where do you start? And we said that platform thing, pick that platform. And the one thing, do it. And if it's from a personal standpoint before you introduce it into your organization and you're new to this, go to a platform, find out which one's best for you.

Mark: 16:54

ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, whatever one, pay for it, dollars 20 a month, it's, and commit to it for six weeks, two months, and see how you like it, because you get the full capabilities of these models. You can prompt it, you can break it, you can make it part of your daily work. And then once that happens, that's when you can start introducing it to colleagues, your boss, and those types of things. Because this, you know, one of the questions John was, okay, which platform is best for me? Which one do I use?

Mark: 17:26

And maybe we could talk about that next week about the different platforms, what we think they're good at, how we use them, and maybe why you would use one over the other, I think is something that would be beneficial for the I

John: 17:37

thought you were gonna mention Perplexity's new computer product in that. So we will think too hard about which platform.

Mark: 17:44

What John's talking about, it just came out from Perplexity. If you haven't heard of Perplexity, it's essentially a search engine. The free version is really good too. It's been out a while. I've used it for a while, but what they've created this agentic digital worker that instead of only answering questions, it carries out multi multi step workflows, creates those for you.

Mark: 18:04

You know, can go across the web, files, corrected apps, those types of things. And it could bring everything into one and you can just tell it, I would like to have an app with the end result is this, and it spins it right up, as will a lot of these agents that we've talked about. And we'll get into those more too as the technology gets So the top three skills we talked about, skill one, make AI literacy priority number one within your organization. Understand what these models can do and what they're really capable of doing. You'll, be shocked and maybe a little bit overwhelmed, but that's okay.

Mark: 18:36

We were too. But you start working with them, you'll just be, you know, as I say, blown away. And then skill number three, that advanced AI literacy use cases and what's worked. Find out other organizations, what's worked for them and kind of apply it, you know, to how you can bring it into your organization and maybe some talking points that you can go to your boss or supervisors or managers and say, here's why we really, really need to be using these tools.

John: 19:00

Maybe next time we talk about the best practices in a sense.

Mark: 19:04

Yeah. Yeah. So maybe best practices and then what model is right for you. That could be next week's show right there. And final thoughts, John, this week, what have you got going with AI?

Mark: 19:14

I know what I'm going to do as soon as we're done here, we get the podcast produced. I'm hopping into computer from Perplexity and I'm gonna spin up, start spinning up our agent that takes care

John: 19:24

Keep of our show to reach that up with you. But, I guess, Mark, one of the things I mentioned earlier was how important it is to keep the human in the loop at all times. That is just resonating with me more than ever. And it was so comforting in many ways to be around thousands and thousands of people who also believe in that importance. We're not getting rid of the human at all in how we're making decisions about, you know, in medicine or in business in general.

John: 19:56

It's just that we have this fantastic support tool now that we didn't have before that is really able to do amazing things. But we remain in control. The thought leader and that's the thought partner.

Mark: 20:09

With that, that sounds like a great way to close. John, until next week in episode number 10. Don't forget our show notes. And in the description, you can subscribe to our premium show notes where we give a little bit more. And on your favorite platform, please hit that subscribe button and you will be notified when a new episode is out.

Mark: 20:28

Till next week, John. Have a good week and we'll talk to you then.

John: 20:31

Excellent. Thanks Mark.

Mark: 20:33

See everyone.