TL;DR
- The Two Sides of My Leadership: For my whole career, I've been two managers. The "Smart" Manager (articulate, clear, the great explainer) and the "Hard" Manager (high-pressure, demanding, "figure-it-out-yourself").
- The "Smart" Manager: I used this side to pitch client, train sales teams and align partners, making complex tech simple.
- The "Hard" Manager: I used this side, inherited from my first boss, to forge my technical teams—forcing them to build real-world "muscle" through practice, not just theory.
- The AI Realization: AI, like our Muses AI, is now the greatest "Smart" Manager on earth. It can explain anything, instantly. This has commoditized the "explanation" part of my job.
- The Shift: The AI era is creating a dangerous "knowing-doing gap". It's easier than ever to sound like an expert without doing anything. My value is no longer in explaining. My value is in enforcing action. The "Hard" Manager side of me is now the only one that matters.
A friend recently asked me a fascinating question: "Why can't a master trader just tell an apprentice everything he knows? Why can't we just transfer that knowledge, replicate the expert, and be done with it?"
This question hits at the core of my entire leadership philosophy, because the truth is, I’ve spent my career being two completely different managers at the same time.
Part 1: The "Hard" Manager (My Inheritance)
My first manager in this industry, back when I was an junior, was pure, old-school pressure. His management "style" was a cocktail of insults and high-stakes questions.
He never answered a question. He only asked them. And you had to be 100% correct, or he’d tear you apart. "The company hired you to solve problems, not ask questions," he'd say.
It was brutal, but it was incredibly effective. He was a "new soldier" builder. He’d take fresh-faced university grads, and if they could survive two years under him, they emerged as bona fide, hardened leaders.
Why? Because he forced them to practice. He refused to be the source of knowledge, so they had no choice but to build their own. They had to get their hands dirty, fail, and learn from the doing.
A part of him lives in me. For my core technical and product teams, I am that manager. I demand practice. I demand execution. I don't care what they know; I care what they can do.
Part 2: The "Smart" Manager (My Superpower)
But I also saw the flaws in that "Hard" model. It was inefficient for anyone not on the front lines of development.
So, I cultivated a second persona: the "Smart" Manager.
This is the side of me that became the great translator. I could take a complex technical roadmap and explain it to a non-technical client so they felt like a tech founder. I could explain a new product's architecture to our sales team, and they'd walk out feeling like chief architects.
This was my "friendly" superpower: articulation. I made everyone feel informed, empowered, and smart. For years, I’ve balanced these two sides.
- I used the "Smart" Manager to train my market-facing teams, who needed to sound like experts to sell.
- I used the "Hard" Manager to forge my "doers," who had to be the experts.
I would be the "Smart" one who provided the clear theory, but then the "Hard" one who, like my first boss, demanded my teams go and prove it.
The AI-Driven Realization: The "Smart" Manager Is Now a Commodity
For years, this balance was my unique value. Then came the Generative AI boom.
I realized with a jolt that my entire "Smart" Manager persona—my superpower of explaining things clearly—was being commoditized.
An AI, like our own Mercury Muses AI, is the ultimate "Smart" Manager. It can act as a personal assistant, answering work-relevant questions based on an entire knowledge base. It can generate high-quality blog content, craft email campaigns, and translate content instantly.
AI is the perfect explainer. It never gets tired. It has access to all the knowledge. It's infinitely patient.
This has created a new, massive problem. The very issue I used to manage—creating "parrots" in my sales team—is about to happen at a global scale. We are about to be flooded with people who sound like experts because an AI gave them the script.
They will be all "knowing" but no "doing". They will have heard the master trader's strategy, but the moment the market dips 1%, they will panic, just like a retail investor who knew the plan but couldn't stomach the reality.
The New Capability: The "Hard" Side Takes Over
My "Smart" Manager superpower is now obsolete. It’s a feature in our product suite.
My capability must shift. My entire value as a leader now rests on the "Hard" Manager—the side I inherited from my first boss.
The AI can give my team a perfect, 10-step plan. But it cannot:
- Sit with them as they execute step 1 and fail.
- Force them to get up and do it again.
- Build their emotional resilience to handle the stress of a real-world project.
- Help them build the "muscle memory" that only comes from doing (like a surgeon mastering a simple appendectomy before they can ever attempt a complex transplant).
The AI provides the "know." My job is to enforce the "do."
The AI era doesn't just need "prompt engineers." It needs leaders who are obsessed with practice. It needs "Action Managers" who can take all this new, amazing, AI-generated theory and drag their teams, kicking and screaming, into the real world to apply it.
I'm no longer just the "friendly" articulator. That part of my job is now table stakes, handled by AI.
My real job is to be the "Hard" Manager—the one who bridges the gap between AI's perfect theory and my team's messy, imperfect, but real execution.
