Time to talk about AI!

One. Good morning, LinkedIn friends, Value First Nation. Welcome to another episode of Value First AI Daily, your collaborative intelligence report. It is Wednesday, January 21, 2026, here with George and Nico. How are we doing, fellas?

Doing good. Doing very well.

Yeah, can't complain. It's Wednesday, it's Orange Day, you know, so I'm, I'm super excited to see what we get into as far as conversation. What about you, Chris?

I am very excited as always right now. Hard, hard not to be. Especially when day after day this message is starting to resonate with more and more people. Yesterday I had a couple, one conversation and one email exchange which is starting to nibble at the need and the possibility of AI native transformation for companies that the conversations start with basically CEO says we need to do something with AI and no idea like how to do it. So they start looking for agency. Like they start the traditional path towards getting help and there's just not a lot out there right now. And this first conversation actually came from me finding a comment on LinkedIn where somebody had been frustrated with the back and forth they had had with it with an agency. And all I had to go on in the comments was that it wasn't marketing focused necessarily and it was unique. So it's not marketing and unique. Right.

Okay.

Manufacturing. So I was like, let me just see what's up with this guy. And it started out as like a catch up conversation and it turned into like, you know what we talk about if we can get leaders to do something, like, all right folks, no more slides, no more spreadsheets. Here's how we build out everything from an AI native stack. Like just the. I think it's explainable in a way where all you have to, all you have to do. Yeah.

I was about to tell you, be careful there.

Right. It's under. I think you can explain the value that can be unlocked when, when leaders are coming at it from an angle of like, I know I can do better for my people. Right. And I really want to. And like if you come at it with that mindset like it's pretty clear to pick out all these points of these file management and file sharing and editing and all of our processes that just get in the way of people being really awesome people. And then you just gotta. The next step is figuring out like what these relationships look like that can't be based on project work really, in my opinion, can't be based on billable hours because. Goes as fast as the organization wants to move. Right. It can go as fast as they want.

Can we back up for a second?

Sure, let's.

Let's back up for a second. First of all, there's. There's a couple things in what you're saying that my brain tweaks a little bit. Like, one. All right, guys, let's get rid of all the slides and the spreadsheets. That's like, okay, guys, let's not breathe today. Like, there's. The leader has to figure out a way to have, like, a ladder or maybe some steps, right? The leader has to figure out. The other thing that tweaked my brain when you were talking is like, I want to do something for my people. How about you do something for yourself first? Like. Like, as a leader of my organization, I dove in head first into AI to figure it out, to bring it to the people, right? And so, like, the. This is why I think historical agencies, this conversation that you kind of kicked off is, like, really weird to me because it's like, first of all, everything's brand new and like, you want to go to an expert when you're paying money to do something. And you're just assuming that these agencies have been doing this for the last two, two and a half years and they're experts. Meanwhile, they watch like seven YouTube videos three days before the discovery meeting. Like what? Like, you as a leader have to become the AI expert to become an AI native for your organization. This is not something that you can ship off. This is not your content, by the way. You shouldn't have shipped it off. This is not your marketing strategy, by the way. Shouldn't have shipped it off. Like, this is literally the way that you're gonna do business moving forward. Trust me. Like, so to all you leaders out there, get in the trenches. If you don't have a chat. GPT, Claude, perplexity, Gemini. If you're not spending at least 15, 20, 30 minutes an hour a day just testing, playing, trying to figure things out because nobody has the brain that you have in the organization. They're not going to think of it the way that you think of it so that you can disseminate it to your people. Okay, Krista. Yeah, I. I'll pause. I'll stop for now. But I'm like, no, let me tie.

This in to belief number two. And then I want to hear from Nico. So five beliefs behind value. First, Belief number two is empowerment over learned helplessness. Right? And that definitely starts at the top. Because part of the big promise of SaaS software has been like, we got it, we got it. You don't need to understand how all this stuff work. Your CEO, you're important. Like, you've got other stuff to worry about. Just sign up for this contract, like, let us implement, hand off all the managed services. Just give it to us. We'll take care of the system. Like, don't worry about it. Right. And now when. When AI gets introduced in, in no real other way except from that SaaS angle. Right. Its leaders are. It's easy for them to just continue on that path. And that's like, absolutely right, George. You got to empower yourself. If you're going to, like, you have to restructure your organization with a new layer of infrastructure that is AI, and no one else can do this for you as far as leading this initiative for the organization.

Yeah, I think that leadership, there's two parts to it because I think there's still a stigma that goes on around it. I think everybody is smart enough to understand that technology brings about efficiencies. And so new technology like this obviously brings around just an exponential amount of efficiencies. And there are people whose. I don't know how else to phrase this. I don't know. A nice way of putting it. There are people whose jobs rest in the minutiae. Right. And their. Their jobs rest in the complexities that have been created over time. And removing those complexities obviously is like telling them, you know, that their position isn't necessarily as important as it used to be, per se. So even in terms of, like, enabling people, I think. I think it's right. That's definitely the right way to go. I just think that.

There is a.

Really, really strong message that you need to send throughout the organization, which is that we are trying to empower you to work more efficiently. We are not trying to replace anyone. Right. And it's a matter of if you want to be. If you really want to push your organization forward, weird as this may sound, you should absolutely put forward that, hey, we're not just going to fill in the extra time with more work. Because, you know, I mean, like, if. If you have a group of people and you're telling them we're going to make you XYZ more efficient. I can tell you from experience, from being in the group, from being outside of the group, from listening to people, I can tell you the first thought that goes through their head is, great, so you're going to give me even more work, right? So there's no, like, there's no positive incentive from just saying, like, hey, have to learn this new tool set, because that's just the way things are, right? Like, yes, that is, that's the, the core of it. Right. Like we have to do this because that is the way things are going to be. But we need to put it forward and we need to at least present it in a way that doesn't make it sound a daunting and B, make it sound as if, oh, we're doing this just to do more work. Right.

I, I totally agree with what you're saying, Nico. Here's where my brain goes with what you're. What you're expressing though is talk is cheap and your employees, leaders are not stupid. They see what's happening around them and people losing their jobs. So here's, here's what I'll say is like, job security should not trump AI innovation. Job security should not trump growth through AI assistance. So if, if talk is cheap, then you got to figure out a way to. Yes, what Nico said, but also you've gotta, you've got to figure out a way for the, the, the building that you're building, the, the business that you're growing, the culture that you're cultivating. The, the thing that you're doing. You've got to figure out a way one to get some psychological safety up in that joint. So when you say we're doing it for this reason that they actually believe that it's for that reason, not a hidden reason behind the thing that you're actually saying from the podium that you're standing at when you're giving the zoom talk or the in house. Like, like you, you. You have to, you have to come from a place of good. We're gonna do this so that we can go to four days a week. We're gonna do this so that we can add more value to the world. We're gonna do this because the bon changing. We're gonna do like what it. Humans have not changed. What's in it for me? What's in it for them? Bro, you want them to be efficient or Broette just saying you want them to be efficient, but they want to have job security. They want to know that they're going to be able to support their family. They want to know, as Nico said, their menial tasks aren't going anywhere or maybe they'll have even doper tasks that they'll be able to do because of the thing that you're invoking in optimization.

Yeah, I mean this is why it's transformation and not optimization. And I'm just going to take These opportunities to share more of this message because it's, it's resonating all over the place when I'm talking to people and like, so I gave you one belief, but we're hitting on all of them right now. And this is intended to be like, if you don't know which way to go and you've got options in front of you, like find a way to prioritize these things where it's like natural value flow, like where are people natural? What are tendencies? What are they interested in? What kind of value do they want to create? Instead of getting them more efficient at sending more emails. If they like talking to people on the phone, help them do more of that. Right. And it's the opposite of control. Like everything about business has been, this is how you control everything to get to the outcomes you want. Right. Good luck with AI. It's not going to work for you. Right. We talked about empowerment over learned helplessness, man. Just the whole history of SaaS. It's like one big push towards. We got it. Calm down. You don't have to worry about this. You don't even know how to do it right. Don't even take the time. Like, oh, if you want to do it though, here's five permission levels you got to go through. So on the fifth time you want to do something, you're probably just not going to ask anymore. Right? Wholeness over fragmentation. Whole ass humans.

Yeah.

People are complete humans, not partial resources. Right. You can think of this in terms of like the silos that we create inside of businesses, but also between, you know, business and personal. And shows like severance exist for a reason. We ask people to show up at work and just be completely different humans than they are. And it just, yeah, hasn't been working out. AI human partnership over replacement. And this is the one. I think this is probably the biggest reason you need a coach to help you with this because it is so easy as Nico is saying, like, all right, we're going to save time. You're not going to have to do this and this and this anymore if you don't fill in that gap of how am I going to use that save time? What else are you going to ask me to do? Because now we've got two extra hours in the day. Are you going to let me experience the rest of my whole ass humanness? Are you going to ask me to do more industrial age stuff and then just. Of course, this should be at the core of every, every system framework, whatever. Evolution and learning over static systems and again, like this industry has been all about the 90 day plans, like project plans, like CRMs. We've seen that shift over the past couple years. It's not a one and done project. Websites are not a one and done project and they've almost always been treated as such. And when the world is AI is forcing things forward every day at this point, like it's, it's 100amindset shift. Like there are tools and frameworks and resources and people available to help you go fast. Now you just have to want to do it. Well, it's not going to be comfortable, but it's, it's. Your people need that because these expectations are built into the buyer experience. And what customers and humans that are experiencing all these things in their own lives, they're going to show up expecting all of this because that's the experience they're getting. And if you're not there to put your humans inside your org, in a position to help those things, they're forced to find ways, and often they do, to serve it in the moment. Right. So.

I want us to be very careful because you said something that if somebody takes it for face value, technology has enabled.