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The Build a Vibrant Culture Podcast explores the real-world strategies behind building strong work culture, improving organizational culture, and leading with clarity in today’s fast-changing business environment.
Hosted by leadership expert Nicole Greer, this podcast features conversations with business leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs who are shaping modern business culture through effective communication, leadership development, and intentional management practices.
Each episode delivers practical insights into leadership and business, including topics like team communication, project management, career growth, and creating workplaces where people perform at their best.
You’ll gain actionable tools, frameworks, and leadership skills you can apply immediately through coaching concepts, real-world examples, and professional development strategies, whether you’re a manager, executive, business owner, or emerging leader.
If you're looking for guidance on building a thriving organizational culture, improving communication, or advancing your leadership career, this podcast is designed for you.
Learn more about training, coaching, and courses at https://vibrantculture.com
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[00:00:00] Nicole Greer: Welcome, everybody, to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer, and they call me The Vibrant Coach, and I have an amazing guest on the show today. Look what he sent me in the mail, right? Who leads when AI thinks? This is a very good question.
[00:00:14] Nicole Greer: So we're gonna, we're gonna meet a really cool guy today. His name is Adrian Wolfberg. He's a researcher, author, organizational scientist, former U.S. intelligence officer, and former naval officer whose work focuses on how organizations generate, interpret, and act on knowledge under conditions of uncertainty.
[00:00:36] Nicole Greer: Woo, that's a mouthful. All right. He draws on experience spanning from four decades of national security, organizational research, and knowledge management. He examines the individual, organizational, emotional, and cognitive dynamics that shape decision-making when problems are complex, ambiguous, and forward-looking.
[00:00:56] Nicole Greer: His work focuses on analysis, organizational adaptation, leadership, and climate security, including recent work on artificial intelligence, knowledge integration, sense-making, and the challenges organizations face in translating insight into effective action. He earned a PhD in organizational behavior from Case Western Reserve University. Previously, he served as a senior program officer at the National Academies of Sciences, where he conducted a study to help NASA, To understand the challenges that line engineers and scientists have when they're promoted to management positions.
[00:01:33] Nicole Greer: Oh, yeah. Overseeing a line of engineers and scientists, a whole new skill set. And he co-led a congressionally mandated study to explore collaboration efforts between climate scientists and intelligent analysts. So I think Adrian has a big brain. What do y'all think? I think it's a big brain, and we're gonna talk to him today about all the stuff in his brain.
[00:01:55] Nicole Greer: I'm so happy you're here.
[00:01:56] Adrian Wolfberg: Well, thank you. I'm glad that you invited me. Appreciate it.
[00:02:00] Nicole Greer: It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. Adrian wrote this book Who Leads When AI Thinks? And let's start with the title because it's really provocative. Who Leads When AI Thinks? What question were you trying to answer when you wrote this book?
[00:02:14] Adrian Wolfberg: Well, I was looking at how leaders can solve the dilemma between the power and the speed of AI, which everybody, you know, recognizes. Yeah ... but yet it has the high likelihood of humans being overdependent on it, and therefore reducing their critical and creative thinking, which are skills that are actually needed especially for complex problems.
[00:02:41] Nicole Greer: Yeah, absolutely. I- I'll tell you a quick story, Adrian. So I work with this municipality, and I was working with this one team who is dependent on another team to get stuff done. That's how it works. And the whole class was telling me how every response they get, they know it's from ChatGPT
[00:02:59] Nicole Greer: There's no insight, there's no- Mm. Humanity. There's no, there's no, there's no furthering the process, right? It's just all generated. And they're like, "You can tell," 'cause sometimes they forget to leave off the stuff that says it's from ChatGPT. So I, I think- Yeah ... this is something to absolutely think about.
[00:03:14] Nicole Greer: So wh- why do so many leaders misunderstand AI? What are... Or what are they misunderstanding? What, what mistakes are they making?
[00:03:20] Adrian Wolfberg: Well, I think they see it just as a, another tool, as another piece of technology that is in the toolbox. And if other people have it, then they want it too. And I think that's, excuse me, that's the big mistake because it's not a tool, it's actually a relationship with something that is now sharing this decision space between, for the first time ever, between humans and some machines.
[00:03:50] Adrian Wolfberg: So it's a, it's not a tool, it's a relationship.
[00:03:54] Nicole Greer: I, I wish you would expand on that a little bit. Tell, tell us about that relationship.
[00:03:58] Adrian Wolfberg: If you can, can come up with the, this idea that a machine you could be in a relationship with, then you, you have to figure out what roles each is gonna play the timing of roles figuring out how the problem evolves and moves through time whose responsibility is it to make final judgments.
[00:04:27] Adrian Wolfberg: So you can think about it just like any relationship people have. Right. Whether it's at work or, or at home. It's a whole set of kind of negotiations- That humans in any relationship always have gon- are gonna have responsibility for. So it's figuring that all out, and that's what, that's what the book is out, book is about, is helping people figure out this new relationship that we now have to have with a collaborator in thinking.
[00:04:57] Nicole Greer: What landed for me, like right now, was like, oh my gosh, maybe AI needs a job description Or understanding its role, how it fits in, what does it do, what does it not do
[00:05:07] Adrian Wolfberg: again, that's a human responsibility to issue something like that, and that's, you know, gonna be dependent upon the nature of the problem.
[00:05:14] Nicole Greer: All right. Very good. So one of the central ideas in your book is that leadership isn't about choosing AI or people, it's about knowing how to align them.
[00:05:23] Nicole Greer: How should leaders think differently about this relationship?
[00:05:26] Adrian Wolfberg: Well, the first thing that leaders sh- should think about is this role of framing. And so what I mean by, by framing is deciding what the scope of the problem is, why it's important, w- who are the actors who are affected by this problem, what are issues of integrity, what are issues of reputation?
[00:05:51] Adrian Wolfberg: Who are, who, who are the extended organizations and people will... that will be interested in and affected by this? That issue of framing is a human, is a leadership competency that needs to be developed. And it's not only something that is developed and used at time zero when the problem is initially confronted and people are working on it.
[00:06:17] Adrian Wolfberg: It actually occurs through time because reality changes, and so there's this constant need to, what I call reframe, as your reality changes. And so this issue of framing and awareness of reality is really a human human skill, human competency.
[00:06:38] Nicole Greer: Yeah. So you're using some kind of coaching language in my mind, framing and reframing which is a real skill set of a great coach, is h- how do we get proper perspective or different perspectives on thing.
[00:06:50] Nicole Greer: And then the other thing that popped in my mind was, everything I read or watch and the gosh, is there plenty of things to look at about AI? I say yes. But the thing of giving the, the AI the right prompts making sure you're asking the right questions, using AI in the proper way.
[00:07:05] Nicole Greer: Is that what you mean when you say framing? Is like how I approach using the ChatGPT or the Claude or the whatever?
[00:07:13] Adrian Wolfberg: In a, in a- I have
[00:07:14] Nicole Greer: to, I have to frame it for Claude to help me. Is that what you're saying?
[00:07:16] Adrian Wolfberg: Yeah. Well, I'm l- I'm raising it up a, a higher level in terms of strategy. Okay. Okay. But ultimately, it would come down to this kind of implementation level as well.
[00:07:28] Adrian Wolfberg: I'm focused on people who are leaders, not necessarily named leaders like a CEO, but anybody who's leading efforts. It could be a first-line supervisor, second-line supervisor, director, or so forth. So it's more at the strategy level of- ... figuring out what is the, what are the values of the organization?
[00:07:50] Adrian Wolfberg: Mm-hmm. What's the actual problem that's trying to be solved? Do we have consensus about what the problem is? What is the nature of the problem? How simple, complex is it? Those kinds of questions need to be part of this framing exercise. And certainly as you cascade down through people who are actually sitting on the computer interacting with the ChatGPT or Claude they would, they would hopefully, hopefully as a matter of organization alignment, which is kind of a separate subject, but it's also something that I'm writing my next book about, is-
[00:08:30] Nicole Greer: Nice
[00:08:30] Adrian Wolfberg: how the, how the guidance or the establishment of such a strategy actually aligns and cascades through the organization so that Joe Worker understands those same issues.
[00:08:44] Nicole Greer: Yeah. So I have a client who, we sat down and we did some strategic planning, and then... And, they want to build 10 stores in the next 10 years.
[00:08:53] Nicole Greer: They want to raise their level of customer service. They want to have a higher level st- of standards inside of those stores in terms of cleanliness and customer service. So help me, I'm trying to follow you, figure all this out ahead of time. Make sure those, that excellence is delineated by these core values, this mission statement, the vision is clear.
[00:09:13] Nicole Greer: Is that what you're saying?
[00:09:15] Adrian Wolfberg: Well, yeah. And, and it goes further. That's at the very top level. Okay. And then at the next l- at the next level it would be what are all the kind of components of this goal? There might be a- areas such as expertise or training or- ... financial aspects demographics.
[00:09:36] Adrian Wolfberg: There could be policy issues, there could be political issues. There could be a slew of issues that all are important before a decision can be made and that need to be understood. There could be real estate issues. All sorts of things. Oh,
[00:09:50] Nicole Greer: yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. How does this relationship with AI that the leader has, how does this change the culture organizations need to build?
[00:10:01] Adrian Wolfberg: Well, I think l- leaders and I think this is true with any, any kind of en- endeavor where culture is important, is they need to model behaviors. And so there are, yeah, there's some specific things that, that can be done. For example, this issue of framing is a skill, like you said, so there would need to be a, a way to develop such a skill from an organizational perspective, not just the framing, but the reframing as well, which also involves providing things like psychological safety and time and space for reflection and for observations to be, to be voiced that would let people know reality is changing.
[00:10:50] Adrian Wolfberg: There also needs to be a shared vocabulary that would be part of this modeling behavior as well. Those are kind of the main pieces that would be needed to, so to speak, institutionalize this kind of leadership approach to
[00:11:09] Adrian Wolfberg: AI.
[00:11:09] Nicole Greer: Okay. Fantastic. Who Leads When AI Think- Thinks is the title, and the subtitle is How Leaders Frame Decisions and Exercise Judgment.
[00:11:16] Nicole Greer: I would say that's the probably the biggest complaint I get when I go out and work with teams. Adrian is "I don't know what my leader was thinking," I hear stuff like that all the time. So there's just this lack of telling the why behind the decision or something, right?
[00:11:31] Nicole Greer: Or the person that actually does the work sees the decision, and The leader's looking at this all wrong, back to your framing, so, that's, that's a big complaint out there. Yeah. So, you wanna speak to that? Yeah.
[00:11:43] Adrian Wolfberg: Yeah. Again, this is in my next upcoming book, which is... I know they're not the focus of, of this one, but it's called-
[00:11:49] Nicole Greer: Well, you can talk
[00:11:50] Nicole Greer: about it.
[00:11:50] Nicole Greer: You can talk
[00:11:51] Nicole Greer: about it ...
[00:11:51] Adrian Wolfberg: Okay. It's called Designing for Adaptability. And- Yeah ... that issue that you just said is a, a dominant theme. It is. And the conse- the consequence, and I look at it very surgically of- Ooh ... from the perspective of consequences of that not happening from both the leader perspective and the implementer, perspective.
[00:12:16] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:17] Adrian Wolfberg: So yeah, that's a big deal. But anyway, I don't know if you were gonna ask a question or if you asked one, if I got sidetracked.
[00:12:25] Nicole Greer: No, no. Well, I mean, knowing how to make good decisions, critical thinking, exercising proper judgment, telling the why, thinking it through I, I don't know, a long time ago, I don't even know if it's true anymore, Adrian, you might c- tell me since you do so much research.
[00:12:38] Nicole Greer: But one of the things I heard, I think I heard it at the Center for Creative Leadership, which is a big think tank over here in North Carolina, I'm familiar with it ... they said... Yeah. What, w- what a wonderful place. Everybody write that down, ccl.org. Don't go there now, but go check them out. They got white papers , and books, and stuff, and it's just amazing place.
[00:12:57] Nicole Greer: But, but one of the things I learned when I was at CCL is that they they were like, "Reflection is the number one habit a leader needs," which is what I think Adrian's trying to say here. Yes?
[00:13:07] Adrian Wolfberg: Exactly. Is that correct? Yeah. Yes, exactly. Yeah, the whole issue of time is a double-edged sword.
[00:13:16] Nicole Greer: Oh,
[00:13:16] Adrian Wolfberg: yes. And I can't stress enough how leaders really need to manage time up and down if, especially in the, in the world of AI, if they don't want to just default human existence to AI output.
[00:13:37] Adrian Wolfberg: I, I'm not trying to be judgmental or anything, I, I'm just, I'm just talking from the point of view of what we already ha- what we already know from the limited research that's been done on large language models so far, mostly with university students, but with the extensive research that's been done on smartphone usage over the last 20 years.
[00:13:58] Adrian Wolfberg: Mm. And anybody who's an educator certainly knows this from their experience. The, what the... That, and from this analogy of smartphone usage that we know that-
[00:14:11] Adrian Wolfberg: The increased anxiety of not getting inputs all the time offloading critical and creative thinking to whatever is, comes out of your search query on a smartphone. There's this increase in social anxiety. There are so many things that we can, probably everyone can tell from h- how their life with a smartphone we-- we're already seeing the glimpses of that with AI use and, and what will probably be an overdependence on AI use.
[00:14:42] Adrian Wolfberg: We're already seeing that. Anyway I, I will say that I think what your question was starting to ask was, what can a leader, what can a leader do? How can you approach, problems,
[00:14:54] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:14:54] Adrian Wolfberg: Well, just looking at the the, the opposite ends of the spectrum. So for really well-understood, well-structured well-known problems where you know the outputs, you know the inputs you know what the objectives are, it's a routine process, a repeatable process, that's perfect for AI integration into your solution set.
[00:15:15] Adrian Wolfberg: Where, that could be something like annual audits or, or things like that. But when humans have to stay in control, this is where problems are really unstructured wicked, and highly complex. So I'll give you an example of that on the, the backside on this unstructured or complex problems.
[00:15:36] Adrian Wolfberg: So say you had a multinational, a large multinational company, and that in the midst of their operations, there was some catastrophic major supply chain disruption. Well, this deals with so many facets that just cannot be handled by what we already know. There's going to be logistic issues, geopolitics inter-- infrastructure issues such as port congestion and, and other transportation routing, workforce rescheduling, dealing with public response both in terms of sentiment and in terms of behavior.
[00:16:13] Adrian Wolfberg: There's going to be mental health issues as well, and on and on. So those that this kind of complex issue is much more amenable to heavy human or leadership involvement.
[00:16:28] Nicole Greer: Yeah. All right. So, I spend a lot of my time helping organizations with strategic planning especially through my SHINE framework and my LIT framework.
[00:16:38] Nicole Greer: And I, I would agree with you that w- people, when they're asked to use their imagination, when they're asked to create, to innovate to be what I, what's... so for example one of the things I do in my company is I do strengths finders. And I don't know if you're familiar with that or not, but like they have these commendable strengths that people can have, and like mine is futurist.
[00:17:05] Nicole Greer: My number one is futurist. I'm always like, "You know what we could do? You know what's possible?" Like I've got a brain like that. That's how I operate. I'm in the future, in that creative, innovative place all the time. What I'm kind of hearing you say is it could be that you don't have that as a strength or you're overly dependent after 20 years of smartphone use.
[00:17:24] Nicole Greer: And you don't know how to use that futurist part of your brain, which is really interesting to me. So you know, strategic planning o- often ask questions like where are we going? What future should we create? What problems should we solve? How do you see AI assisting strategic planning? And where do leaders need to guard against outsourcing it?
[00:17:45] Adrian Wolfberg: Yeah, I think all of those questions are predominantly human leadership responsibilities. Okay. Certainly, AI could be used with researching, maybe questions about how competitors may have operated their success or failures or that kind of research. But the questions that you're asking, those are just human, human questions because that is
[00:18:16] Adrian Wolfberg: The, the question of where are we going is so contextually dependent upon what a, a leader or the leadership team is, is thinking about. So much of this debate or or issue about this relationship between AI and machines is really about understanding reality as we know it, and humans are the best to be able to do that.
[00:18:42] Nicole Greer: What What you keep saying, that's a human question. That's a human question. So what are the characteristics of a human question? Is it because I can have insight, I have experience with the company, I have memories?
[00:18:57] Adrian Wolfberg: Well, yeah.
[00:18:58] Adrian Wolfberg: Those are all very, very key. Insight means that you can come up with a new understanding about something that has not been resolved before. Understanding who, who is important in the, the system of people and organizations that are of interest to us, that is human. This idea of r- relationships and agendas and intentions deceptions,
[00:19:28] Nicole Greer: Ooh, don't miss that
[00:19:29] Nicole Greer: everybody.
[00:19:30] Adrian Wolfberg: Yeah. All these things are and y- empathy is also a very important Yeah. So when I say humans so I come from the... I'm writing... The, the book I'm, I've written, again, is leaders can be anybody. It could be a 22-year-old. 100%. So I try not to get, I try not to get wrapped up into a leader. So that's why I u- use humans a lot.
[00:19:53] Adrian Wolfberg: Really leader is anybody who can help shape, shape the future or the direction and, and help people see where you're going. So that's kind of part of the, the question that you're answering as well. AI could be, AI could be used to, research what have, what have other leaders, professed, or what has been their success, or what has been their fail.
[00:20:16] Adrian Wolfberg: So those kind of research kind of questions would be appropriate, this kind of background in, in the pursuit of something, but not the actual what should my vision be kind of a thing.
[00:20:29] Nicole Greer: Okay. All right. So, let's see. One thing I teach leaders is that culture is built one decision at a time. If leaders begin relying heavily on AI, what cultural habits should they protect so they don't accidentally create an organization that stops thinking critically?
[00:20:47] Nicole Greer: That's a mouthful.
[00:20:48] Adrian Wolfberg: Yeah.
[00:20:49] Nicole Greer: Did y'all pick that
[00:20:50] Nicole Greer: up?
[00:20:50] Adrian Wolfberg: That's, that's a... Yeah, that's a really excellent and, and foundational question, and it really goes down to the, the human or the leader role of framing the problem and maintaining cognizance over the problem and the problem solution over time. So it's an iterative kind of relationship with this co-brain, this machine- Mm
[00:21:17] Adrian Wolfberg: who's thinking I, I come back to framing again. It's the figuring out what's important, what kind of information is important, who is it for? All these kind of questions have to always be th- asked and, and answered and, and everybody from the top down ideally should have those answers, so it's not just the person at the top who understands that.
[00:21:43] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And I, I love what you're saying about everybody's a leader. I teach that all the time. If you're running this machine all day long, you're leading that process, and it impacts everything. So I'm right there with you. So I- just this framing thing, I, I'm gonna share something, see what you think about it, Adrian.
[00:22:00] Nicole Greer: So, I, I work with this guy and his, his whole organization up in Chicago, Illinois. It's called Strategic Coach. And Dan Sullivan is such a futurist as well. That's why I love this guy, 'cause like he talks about stuff, I'm like, "Oh yeah, that's cool. That could be possible." He lives in the future all day long.
[00:22:17] Nicole Greer: But he s- did this thing I think 25 years ago. He created this like little piece of paper diagram called the strategy circle, and when I first heard him talk about it, I was like this guy's a genius. And what he basically said was and what reason I'm bringing it up, Adrian, is that I think this might help people understand what you mean by framing, but you tell me if I'm way off base because I'm here to learn too.
[00:22:39] Nicole Greer: But this piece of paper, he'd say, "Here's the thing that I need to solve or the thing I wanna do. Here's the opportunity, here's the problem," whatever. And he would say, of course you need to say, "When do I wanna get this done by?" Make it a smart goal and all that good jazz. But then his thinking was is he said the human brain at first say, "You know what we could do?"
[00:22:59] Nicole Greer: But like immediately this second brain pops up and says, "That's gonna be hard. Be careful. You'll waste a lot of energy. You'll... and things can go wrong," right? So there's this like survival thing. I don't know if it's our amygdala kicking in , our limbic brain saying, "Be careful." But he's identify every thing that is in the way of this getting done.
[00:23:19] Nicole Greer: And that might be the human part, 'cause from experience I know that this could go wrong, and from this I know that could go wrong. And he says, "Once you have your obstacles, those become the raw material for the strategy." And so figure that out first, which is, I think, not what we do. Usually we just start strategizing, but he's "Figure out every thing that'll go wrong possibly, and then make those your strategies."
[00:23:43] Nicole Greer: What do you think about that?
[00:23:44] Adrian Wolfberg: Yeah, I think that's very- Is that
[00:23:45] Nicole Greer: brand new?
[00:23:46] Adrian Wolfberg: Yes. Yes.
[00:23:47] Nicole Greer: Okay
[00:23:47] Nicole Greer: Okay. All right. So I, I just think that's like genius. I teach that to people all the time, and they're like, "Oh my gosh, that's amazing." And then, you get a bigger picture of what's gonna happen. It's just not all pie in the sky stuff, right? Right. Okay.
[00:24:00] Adrian Wolfberg: So- It's, it's, it's a, it's a way of identifying all the kind of the ingredients in, in the problem, as opposed to just making a declaration that I'm gonna go there, and that's what we're gonna do, and we're not gonna consider all the kind of things that are in- associated with it.
[00:24:21] Adrian Wolfberg: Yeah, so that's a good, that's a good way of describing framing.
[00:24:25] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And, like we were talking earlier, like the guy that's gonna be on the front line, the leader made a decision, whether it was the shift leader or the CEO, but the person that has to do the work is like, "Well, do they not understand this?"
[00:24:39] Nicole Greer: Right? Which is the obstacle, right? And so it's really helpful. All right. So, I have this little lit leadership model that I encourage leaders to think about. Lead with a vibrant vision, right? Think about the future instead of managing stuff all day. Be a person of integrity and integrate integrity, and take what you're doing the ordinary thing you're doing, and make it extraordinary.
[00:25:00] Nicole Greer: So, which of those do you think AI can support, and which ones will always belong to human leadership?
[00:25:06] Adrian Wolfberg: My initial thought of responding to you is that AI could be helpful with giving feedback to the narrative statement that is the vision. Providing the AI with a statement of who the audience is, which could be various that could be a way to provide kind of the, the grammar or the suggested grammar for, tweaking a vision statement.
[00:25:35] Adrian Wolfberg: So that, that could be, that could be done. But I think as far as the other two, it's really about a behavior that you're talking about. Yeah. My understanding of, looking, h- hearing what you're talking about. This idea of integrity is a behavioral thing. This idea of, elevating the norm is a behavioral thing.
[00:25:57] Adrian Wolfberg: So those are really the responsibility of, and the competencies of human leadership.
[00:26:02] Nicole Greer: Yeah. All right, it's all about building the great human behaviors, having great humans. Great humans can do great things. That's m- that's what I believe.
[00:26:09] Nicole Greer: All right. Many organizations are excited about AI because of its efficiency, but leadership has always been about people. How do leaders keep AI or how do leaders keep AI from making the workplace feel less human?
[00:26:22] Adrian Wolfberg: Yeah. Well, again, this is about adopting a view about AI not as a tool, but as a relationship between two thinking entities. So no longer is it just humans who are involved with thinking about something. We now have this kind of new era where we have- Yeah ... shared, we have shared thinking or responsibilities.
[00:26:49] Adrian Wolfberg: And so this is this relationship. So this reinforces this human element of understanding what the problem is. So this example that use, that you used about strategy development is a way that, that forces one to figure out the, the barriers so that you gets a better idea of what the problem is and how complicated or serious or simple or whatever it is.
[00:27:14] Adrian Wolfberg: And to be able to monitor this problem space and, and reality over time, understanding the components of the problem, this idea that most problems that are gonna be complex are really combinations of smaller problems. Yes. And so the challenge is understanding not only the, the nature of these smaller problems, but also how these smaller problems interact with each other and with the whole.
[00:27:42] Adrian Wolfberg: So these are the human, strengths or the human activity that needs to be always involved so that the outcome, which is the best relationship of AI and, and human, is what is the right mix of human involvement and AI involvement? And that's what you want. That's the leadership competency, and you have to go through these, questions that I just talked about or these competencies that we just talked about in order to get there.
[00:28:12] Nicole Greer: Mm-hmm. Let's talk about the next generation of leaders that are coming into the workforce. That's a lot of the people I'm privileged to work with. They're like, "We got these new leaders. Help them." I'm like, "Okay." If you're preparing young professionals to enter the workforce today, what human capabilities should they be developing that AI is least likely to replace?
[00:28:34] Adrian Wolfberg: Yeah. So that's a really good question. There's been a lot of discussion on the periphery of that question. You can see some concrete examples of this by AI companies hiring philosophers. Hmm. But a- as to your questions, I think it's really important to, to read, to read novels in particular.
[00:28:57] Nicole Greer: Mm.
[00:28:58] Adrian Wolfberg: Well, read anything especially novels Novels are devices that trigger the imagination, and so that is an, gonna be an important brain exercise that's always gonna be needed. Mm-hmm. It d- helps develop it helps you experience curiosity and also im- imagining it doesn't always have to be novels.
[00:29:21] Adrian Wolfberg: It, it could be historical fiction or even nonfiction, business management. Anything which stretches your awareness, your knowledge about what's going on would be very, very helpful also to understand empathy as well. This has been a challenge because in schools now and... schools and in just social life, because of smartphone usage and AI usage, reading is, I think, becoming a challenge.
[00:29:55] Adrian Wolfberg: There have been reports of high school seniors entering college not knowing how to construct sentences or not able to read a chapter. But to answer your question, I think that's what's really important. So you could talk about say a curriculum in college or in community college that focuses on what I think is still called liberal arts or humanities which could be done in conjunction with, technical understanding about AI. That's certainly AI literacy is im- important, just like, knowing how to use a smartphone knowing, knowing how to use a laptop and typing things in or so forth. But the human aspect That AI won't be able to replace are these things that are centered around imagination, creativity, curiosity.
[00:30:45] Adrian Wolfberg: Mm-hmm. And that's what's needed in-
[00:30:48] Nicole Greer: Amen. And you are just making me so happy over here, I'm about to burst, because one of the things I tell leaders all the time is like, "Hello, hello. Leaders, read." I will go and give a presentation, and I'll be like, "Okay, everybody write this down. Th- this book, that book, this book, that book," and, and somebody will say to me eventually, they're like, "You really want us to read all these books?" And I'm like, "Yeah." They, they get re- you know? I might go mention four books, can't you knock those four out this quarter? I mean, you just read a chapter a day or whatever," and and it's so important to read. And then the thing you said about historic historical fiction, is that how you said it? Mm-hmm. Okay. You will learn so much about this world, and you just have to do this. I have... I read, I forget what book I wrote about, read about Thomas Jefferson, 'cause Adrian lives next to Washington, DC, so I love all those old presidents.
[00:31:36] Nicole Greer: And this book was this thick. I mean, it took me a long time to get through it, but I learned so much about my country at 50 years old, 'cause I read it 10 years ago, that I d- I didn't even know. I mean, y'all, crazy. All right. So Adrian is correct. Rewind and listen to that whole thing again that he just said.
[00:31:54] Nicole Greer: That was so good. And curiosity, I think is the number one skill. I, what I teach Adrian is, I, I teach these young, I'm like, "You need to let, or learn to ask a lot of questions. Don't try to be the smart one in the room and think you know it all. Ask a T ton of questions." And they're like, "Really?" And I'm like, "Yes."
[00:32:11] Nicole Greer: And to have people ask an open-ended question, this is a huge skill set.
[00:32:15] Adrian Wolfberg: Right ...
[00:32:16] Nicole Greer: I agree with Adrian.
[00:32:17] Adrian Wolfberg: Yeah. Yeah, yes n- yes, no questions are useless.
[00:32:21] Nicole Greer: Absolutely.
[00:32:22] Adrian Wolfberg: Well, that's- Yeah, and- ... what you mean
[00:32:22] Nicole Greer: by open, yeah. Yeah, yeah. 'Cause, well, y- "Do you think we should do this?" No. That's a terrible question.
[00:32:28] Nicole Greer: The question should be, "What would happen if we did this? What could go wrong if we did this? What would be the upside? How would th- this affect manufacturing?" Or whatever the thing is, right? So, oh my gosh, it's a huge skill. And curiosity, it... And what I tell people, I don't know, g- maybe you have something to say about this.
[00:32:46] Nicole Greer: We're going off s- script here, Adrian. But to me, curiosity means you care. I wanna know more. I'm, I wa- I'm invested. I want to get into this thing. I want to solve this problem. But people are like, "Well, whatever y'all wanna do, just tell me what to do and I'll do it." Eh.
[00:33:02] Adrian Wolfberg: Yeah. Sure. I like the way you s- you define that.
[00:33:05] Adrian Wolfberg: Yeah. But yeah.
[00:33:06] Nicole Greer: Mm. Yes, so curiosity. He is absolutely correct, and I say this all the time too. You, you all who listen to me regularly, and to all my amazing guests like Adrian Wolfberg, author of Who Leads When AI Thinks, go to Amazon, b- order it now is that you should go get a little coaching certificate.
[00:33:23] Nicole Greer: Take a little course on coaching. It will up your question asking, and will up your curiosity. That's what you need to do. Okay, here's our, here's our next question. As organizat- organizations become more AI enabled, what leadership mistakes do you think we'll look back on f- five years from today and say, "Whoops, should have seen that coming"?
[00:33:41] Adrian Wolfberg: Yeah, well, one thing we already see coming is over-dependence and over-delegation to AI. That... We're already seeing that, but I think we're ignoring that. Another is that we don't spend, this goes back to time, that we haven't spent enough... I'm think- I'm saying this from the point of view of 5 years in the future, 10
[00:34:02] Adrian Wolfberg: years in the future.
[00:34:02] Nicole Greer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do it, do
[00:34:02] Nicole Greer: it.
[00:34:02] Adrian Wolfberg: That we didn't spend enough time asking whether everybody understood the problem
[00:34:07] Nicole Greer: Mic drop. So good
[00:34:08] Adrian Wolfberg: And that we were able to move faster, but we really didn't understand what faster meant
[00:34:15] Nicole Greer: Talk more about that
[00:34:16] Adrian Wolfberg: The pressure of time and of action
[00:34:21] Adrian Wolfberg: It is gonna be accelerated by AI, but humans just are not built to understand at that speed And so once you operate faster than you can understand-
[00:34:36] Nicole Greer: Mm ...
[00:34:37] Adrian Wolfberg: the chances for chaos, for outcomes that are-
[00:34:42] Nicole Greer: Mistakes.
[00:34:43] Adrian Wolfberg: Mistakes, outcomes that are unexpected become much greater, and you start defaulting or going down the slippery slope of offloading human judgment to AI.
[00:34:56] Adrian Wolfberg: And that's, that's
[00:34:57] Nicole Greer: the
[00:34:58] Adrian Wolfberg: big concern.
[00:34:58] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And you're right, everybody talks about, "I don't have enough time, I'm overwhelmed, I'm burnt out," blah, blah, blah. But you... We have to pull back, we have to reflect, and you have to go slow to go fast.
[00:35:08] Nicole Greer: It's like just going to the gas station and filling up your tank. It's, it's like the same thing, people. That's the best analogy. All right. Here's my last question for you, and then we'll do a quick little lightning round. If every CEO listening could implement one lesson from this book, everybody, Who Leads When AI Thinks, all right, what would you hope they would do differently?
[00:35:29] Adrian Wolfberg: Yeah, that's a great question. I really appreciate that. So from the leader's perspective, instead of asking, "Can AI solve this?" I'd want them to ask, "Do we understand what problem we are trying to solve?" And then the next day, the CEO could issue a policy, and that policy would be something like, "No AI project can move forward until the leadership team can articulate in one sentence the problem they are solving, why they believe that it is the real problem, the fundamental problem, and what evidence would prove them wrong."
[00:36:08] Nicole Greer: Okay, rewind that everybody. That's, that's a, that's a 59-year-old person saying rewind. Don't miss that. It was, it was the '80s. It's the cassettes. Do y'all know what a cassette is? What about an 8-track? Do your research, people. Okay, so push your little toggle thing backwards and listen to what Adrian just said.
[00:36:26] Nicole Greer: I mean, that is money, everybody. That is really good. Really, really good. I love that. All right, so, I'm gonna go throw, throw out some quick prompts to this genius I'm talking to, Adrian Wolfberg. Don't miss that. We got a genius on here today. Some quick prompts, so whatever first comes to mind. Are you ready, Adrian?
[00:36:45] Nicole Greer: All right, so AI- Yes ... in one word.
[00:36:47] Adrian Wolfberg: Relationship.
[00:36:48] Nicole Greer: Biggest myth about AI.
[00:36:50] Adrian Wolfberg: It knows everything.
[00:36:51] Nicole Greer: Most underrated leadership skill.
[00:36:55] Adrian Wolfberg: Framing.
[00:36:56] Nicole Greer: Better predictor of success: IQ or curiosity?
[00:37:00] Adrian Wolfberg: Curiosity, definitely.
[00:37:02] Nicole Greer: One habit every executive should develop before adopting AI.
[00:37:06] Adrian Wolfberg: Asking questions.
[00:37:08] Nicole Greer: What book should every leader read besides yours?
[00:37:11] Adrian Wolfberg: I like, I think Daniel Kahneman's 2011 book. It's called Thinking, Fast and Slow. Ooh. The reason... Yeah, the reason that I'm, I'm recommending that, it's, it's written for the practitioner. He's a psychologist. But the reason that I'm recommending that is before worrying about AI we need to, we need to understand or know how we think as humans, and that book is a good primer for that.
[00:37:35] Nicole Greer: Oh, that is a great one, everybody. Write it down. What human skill will never become obsolete?
[00:37:41] Adrian Wolfberg: That's a really good question. This answer may seem simple or overly simple, but it's figuring out what's actually going on.
[00:37:48] Nicole Greer: Oh, don't miss that. Get fierce with reality, everybody. Okay. Complete the sentence: the future belongs to leaders who...
[00:37:55] Adrian Wolfberg: Who understand what is going on faster, but not necessarily making faster decisions.
[00:38:04] Nicole Greer: Mm. All right. What's one thing that AI will never replace?
[00:38:08] Adrian Wolfberg: Our ownership of judgment that we make in, making a decision.
[00:38:13] Nicole Greer: Okay. My favorite question. Culture is...
[00:38:16] Adrian Wolfberg: That's a good question. I've been having that on my mind for a couple of decades now, and here's my answer to that.
[00:38:24] Adrian Wolfberg: It's, it's the system that's invisible. It may have physical attributes that we can point to, but the nature of it is a- an invisible thing that actually shapes how we understand reality, how we make decisions, and, and how we act.
[00:38:41] Nicole Greer: Hmm. All right. So Adrian, I know you're not just doing this for your, your health.
[00:38:47] Nicole Greer: How do people work with you? If I've got somebody listening to this podcast and they're like, "Oh my gosh. We better get our arms around this AI thing and it may be we may have to actually retrain people about this whole AI thing. If somebody spends a day working with you, what would they experience?
[00:39:04] Nicole Greer: How do, how do we find you?
[00:39:05] Adrian Wolfberg: Well, I'm on the internet I've got a website. There's easy ways to find me. But what I would hope that they would come away with is that they would actually see reality differently. Hmm. They would see the importance of curiosity. They would feel challenged, but not in any kind of judgmental way.
[00:39:26] Adrian Wolfberg: They would hopefully understand the, the need to ask better questions and be more comfortable with ambiguity and complexity, and leave with some more, some better confidence, some higher confidence, because they're in a position to understand what's going on.
[00:39:44] Nicole Greer: Mm. So good. All right. So everybody, reach out look for Adrian Wolfberg on the internet.
[00:39:50] Nicole Greer: Of course, it's all down in the show notes, so go down there, click on a link. But before you do that, why don't you just like this episode? Do Nicole Greer and Adrian Wolfberg a favor and click and say, "This was good." Leave a comment, let us know what you're thinking so we can think about what you're thinking.
[00:40:07] Nicole Greer: We can do a better job. We're here to learn, too. All right, so everybody, it's been another amazing episode of the Build a Vibrant Culture pod- podcast. Adrian, I'm so grateful for you. You made me smarter. I'm so excited to talk to you another time. Call me when the second book is done. Will you do that?
[00:40:21] Adrian Wolfberg: I will, yeah.
[00:40:22] Nicole Greer: Okay. Thank you. All right. Yeah. Bye, everybody.