The wonder and the weight

The tension between individual excitement about AI (senior leaders working weekends, doing a week's work in ten minutes) and organisational inertia (unchanged meeting cadences, team structures, adoption rates). 84% of the world has never used AI. What happened this week: * Technical barrier gone, domain expertise matters now: Wharton MBA students built companies in four days with AI tools, non-technical students went furthest * Apple chose Google over itself for AI features, paying a billion a year for Gemini: build vs buy resolved in favour of partnerships * McKinsey '25 squared': grow client-facing 25%, cut back-office 25% using AI to rebalance a $20B firm What to try: * Find your misfits: identify the one-in-ten AI enthusiasts, free them from reporting lines, give them mandate beyond old job description * Change the cadence: if AI makes execution faster, review more often (daily not every two days). Review cycle is now the bottleneck * Package around problems not platforms: 'this is your sales coach' drives adoption, 'look at our new AI tool' doesn't Read the full edition with all links and sources: https://steadman.ai/newsletters/david/#edition-2026-02-21