Vlad on Leadership

Logan Shimmer is the founder of Shimmer Labs, an AI automation consultancy helping Main Street businesses in Stillwater, Oklahoma automate the work they dread without losing what makes them human. He's built AI courses for Oklahoma State University and local technical colleges, and runs free weekly office hours where anyone in town can walk in and ask him anything about AI. Before that, he spent 15 years building automation across manufacturing, marketing, and the energy grid.In our conversation, we discuss:1. Why he builds a harness around AI instead of a fully autonomous pipeline, and why the companies behind ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini have no incentive to tell you that2. Running bi-directional retros with his own AI agents, what one of them told him about his productivity, and why he calls them his "innies"3. The real story behind automating a yoga studio owner's cancellation process, and what she got back that had nothing to do with software4. Why "yes, and" from an improv class became his best tool for resetting client expectations about what AI can and can't do5. What's left for humans once the routine work is gone, and why he thinks trust, connection, and creativity get more room to grow, not less6. His five-part prompt framework (role, context, task, format, constraints) and the one part most people skipLOGAN LINKS:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loganshimmer/Website: shimmerlabs.coVLAD LINKS:Website: vladmoskovski.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/vladmoskovskiFree Somatic Intelligence Toolkit for LeadersAI gives everyone data. The leaders who stand out also listen to their body's intelligence. Download the free toolkit here: vladmoskovski.com/handbook-landing-pageEPISODE LINKS:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033z600k53oJJi7CneGCed?si=5cc9vvfCSZmmf_cExjm8Vg&utm_source=copy-link&nd=1&dlsi=b9fa939ffd154488Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vlad-on-leadership/id1896931445

Itai Green is the founder of an open innovation consulting firm, where he helps corporations and governments run innovation programs with startups. He spent 15 years as an entrepreneur before heading innovation for Amadeus in Israel, and has since run open innovation with hundreds of organizations worldwide. His book, Innovation or Elimination: Winning in a World of Constant Change, published in May 2026.In our conversation, we discuss:Why the pace of technological change now moves faster than most corporate decision making, and what has to change about how executives decideWhy 95 percent of failed corporate-startup pilots have nothing to do with the startup failing to deliverInside his bootcamp process: from three ranked priorities per VP, to ten shortlisted startups, to two pilots, to one integrationWhy board incentives built entirely on quarterly P&L are the real block on innovationWhy he treats every employee as a sensor for the next disruption, and the shift from ego to curiosity that comes with itHis advice to corporate VCs: pilot before you invest, because a pilot is the best due diligence money can buyItai Links:LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/itaigreenhttps://www.globalinnovationandstrategy.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/itaigreen/Book: Innovation or Elimination: WINNING in a World of Constant Change. An Executive PlaybookVlad Links:Website: vladmoskovski.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/vladmoskovskiFree Somatic Intelligence Toolkit for LeadersAI gives everyone data. The leaders who stand out also listen to their body's intelligence. Download the free toolkit here:vladmoskovski.com/handbook-landing-pageTimestamps:00:00 Welcome and introduction00:47 Itai's path: entrepreneur, then head of innovation at Amadeus, to founding his own open innovation firm02:16 The real bottleneck in corporate innovation, and why it isn't finding the right startups03:33 Why corporate and startup cultures move at completely different speeds06:05 How three and a half years of AI acceleration made his job easier08:01 What it costs leaders to let go of the operating model that made them successful10:16 Speed of decisions versus slowing down for strategy: comparing notes with Vlad11:54 Treating the ecosystem as a threat or an opportunity, and what McKinsey can't see17:01 Why board incentives built around quarterly P&L are the real blocker19:10 Inside the bootcamp: from three ranked priorities per VP to one integration22:31 Why 95 percent of failed pilots aren't the startup's fault23:07 Vetting a startup partner like a marriage, not a vendor contract25:19 What changes in a leader once open innovation works: curiosity over ego40:19 Closing: let's go make miracles happen

Annie Tsai is Chief Operating Officer at marketing technology company Interact, where she has spent 25 years building, growing, and scaling software companies. She also serves as COO of Moms in Tech, a global community of over 19,000 working mothers in the industry, and writes two weekly columns on technology and AI. Before this, she spent more than fifteen years leading customer experience and cross-functional teams from the C-suite.In our conversation, we discuss:Why the shift from orchestrating work to actually executing it herself is creating a very real identity crisis, and not just for junior workersThe real cost of running twenty concurrent strategic initiatives without gaining any personal capacity, and the systems she had to build, then open source, just to keep track of it allWhat she had to let go of to get here: the clout that comes with a title, and the belief that time served still earns you anythingWhy taste and craft, not raw skill, is what separates someone with institutional knowledge from a new grad using the same AI toolsWhy almost nobody in a room full of early AI adopters knew what "planning mode" was, and what that reveals about how most people are still using AI wrongWhy she thinks this identity crisis might finally break America's habit of letting work define who we areWhere to find Annie:Personal: annietsai.comomsintech.comWhere to find Vlad:Website: vladmoskovski.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/vladmoskovskiFree Somatic Intelligence Toolkit for LeadersAI gives everyone data. The leaders who stand out also listen to their body's intelligence. Download the free toolkit here: vladmoskovski.com/handbook-landing-pageTimestamps:00:00 Introduction, and why work now means holding twenty conversations at once that never end00:58 Who Annie Tsai is: COO at Interact, Moms in Tech, and her upcoming third book02:44 The premise behind her column: a generation trained to become one expert thing, now disrupted04:27 From orchestrator to executor: how her actual role changed over the last few years08:21 The cognitive cost of running twenty strategic initiatives at once, and the systems she built to survive it10:43 What she had to let go of: the clout that comes with a title12:20 Taste and institutional knowledge as the real differentiator AI can't replace17:15 Her hope for the American workforce: that what we do stops being who we are18:24 The grief of losing a skill you used to love, and why it deserves to be named as grief20:47 Painting murals, and finding the time to fill the buckets that make you feel like yourself21:55 Advice to her thirteen year old son on what to study and why25:10 Creativity as the new white picket fence29:58 Metacognition as the most underrated AI skill, and why almost nobody in the room knew what planning mode was32:32 Why "AI native" is the wrong hire, and what to look for instead35:35 Modeling AI use as a leader, and the CEO who built the dashboard instead of just talking about it36:30 Closing: what people will be pleasantly surprised to evolve into

Berk Algan is the founder of Virtual Cyber Risk Office, where he works as a fractional CISO and Chief Compliance Officer for growth-stage companies. He built the security and risk function at Silicon Valley Bank from the ground up over more than a decade, growing it to a team of 40 as the bank scaled to $200 billion. Before that, he audited Google, Apple, and Facebook at Ernst & Young, and left corporate for good in 2023.In our conversation, we discuss:Why the first wave of AI hit structured, repeatable knowledge work first, and what the next wave (the review layer) is already coming forThe compression trap: how AI shrinks the time it takes to do the work while the scope quietly expands to fill the gap, so people end up working more, not lessWhy more AI tools and more options are creating more decision fatigue, not less, and what that means for how you decide anything right nowWhat actually separates people who adapt well from people who don't, and why it has less to do with skill than most advice suggestsHis three-part response to this moment: get closer to the actual business problem, protect the right things instead of the familiar things, and use your own unsettledness as fuel instead of something to fixWhat he'd say to a technical leader who feels the ground moving and doesn't know where they're headed yetWhere to find Berk:LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/berkalganWebsite: virtualcyberriskoffice.comWhere to find Vlad:Website: vladmoskovski.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/vladmoskovskiFree Somatic Intelligence Toolkit for LeadersAI gives everyone data. The leaders who stand out also listen to their body's intelligence. Download the free toolkit here: vladmoskovski.com/handbook-landing-pageTimestamps:00:00 Welcome and introduction01:00 The three waves of AI hitting knowledge work04:30 Why more options are creating more decision fatigue09:30 The compression trap: doing more, not less14:40 Overwhelm, burnout, and the case for human flourishing26:40 Choosing optimism without ignoring what's real29:25 Life design and finding gratitude in the noise30:25 Why he left corporate, and what made the leap possible35:20 Relationships as the real currency after corporate37:10 Get closer to the business problem41:45 T-shaped vs. Z-shaped: what to actually get deep in45:15 Closing line: get comfortable with your discomfort

JD Margulici is a technologist with more than twenty years of experience building information technology for transportation, industrial automation, and autonomous driving. He cofounded Vehicle Data Science in 2013, pioneering the use of connected fleet data to build high-definition maps, and later served as CTO at Infinite Uptime and a senior staff engineer at Cruise. Before that, he trained in mathematics and physics at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, then earned a master's in transportation engineering and an MBA at UC Berkeley.In our conversation, we discuss:How AI has shifted from an autocomplete assistant to the default first move in his day to day coding and design work, and what that shift costs in terms of owning your own knowledgeWhy raw intuition and taste, not access to tools, is what now separates good work from bad, since everyone has access to the same AIThe real bottleneck in software engineering: not writing code, which is under 20 percent of the job, but interpersonal communication, translating vision into requirements into architecture into codeA cautionary story about two AI-written memos on his team's wiki that sounded confident but didn't hold up, and why he chose not to argue with an AI's reasoningPhysical AI and the "floating brain in a tank" problem: why language-only intelligence still lacks a toddler's intuition for how the physical world works, and what robotics could changeThe structured to unstructured to structured pattern that makes AI agents actually useful, and why he's still unsure what to tell his own kids about their futureWhere to find JD:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdmargulici/Where to find Vlad:Website: vladmoskovski.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/vladmoskovskiFree Somatic Intelligence Toolkit for LeadersAI gives everyone data. The leaders who stand out also listen to their body's intelligence. Download the free toolkit here: vladmoskovski.com/handbook-landing-pageTimestamps:00:00 Introduction, and being the first ever podcast guest00:46 How the day to day of coding and design has shifted with AI in the past year01:54 Democratized tools, and what actually separates good work from bad now04:11 Why interpersonal communication, not code, is software engineering's real bottleneck07:24 The AI-written memos on the wiki that didn't hold up09:34 AI slop, and the flood of easy to generate, hard to evaluate content13:07 Guardrails, and hoping the growing pains are just transitional14:29 Physical AI, digital twins, and managing real-world infrastructure16:58 The "floating brain in a tank" without senses19:30 Representations, notation, and why code is often the most precise language23:11 The structured to unstructured pattern that makes AI agents work26:10 Closing thoughts: feeling clueless, parenting, and what to tell his kids about the future

Swapnil Shrivastava is a product leader at Adobe, where he works at the intersection of AI, creativity, and product strategy. He has spent over 23 years at Adobe, moving from engineering into design and product leadership, and today leads agentic imaging and AI-powered creative workflows for Adobe Express. Before that, he helped shape Adobe's creative tools from the ground up, and outside of work he studies Indian classical music and the bansuri.In our conversation, we discuss:Why AI is, at the core, nothing more than next word prediction, and why that fact does not make what is coming any less realWhy running an AI agent has gotten as addictive as coding used to be, and what that says about attention and controlWhat is actually left of a person's identity once AI can do most of the doing: judgment, taste, and the ability to set the objective the model is chasingWhy training everyone on the same intelligence risks making all of us more similar, not more capableWhy the loneliness cost of an AI-driven work life worries him more than losing a job, and what the old studies on touch and love still proveWhat he tells his teenage son, who wants to be a DJ instead of a coder, and the project he is building to teach AI how to carry Indian classical music forwardWhere to find Swapnil:LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/swapnil-shrivastava-2b493637Where to find Vlad:Website: vladmoskovski.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/vladmoskovskiFree Somatic Intelligence Toolkit for LeadersAI gives everyone data. The leaders who stand out also listen to their body's intelligence. Download the free toolkit here: vladmoskovski.com/handbook-landing-pageTimestamps:00:00 Introduction, and why AI is just next word prediction01:09 The story behind the background: Adobe's decades-old office puzzle tradition04:43 Inside Adobe's "code red" moment on AI07:46 AI alignment and the idea of human flourishing09:36 Why running an agent while playing flute felt so addictive13:28 What is left of identity when AI can do most of the doing16:40 Taste versus judgment, and reading thought directly19:23 The patterns AI can learn, and who Swapnil is outside them20:23 Man as the measure of everything, and Sam Altman's line about kids never outsmarting ChatGPT23:14 The Nigerian call center story behind ChatGPT's word choices25:23 Advice to his teenage son, who wants to be a DJ27:51 The orphanage studies on touch, love, and what people actually need to survive29:19 The loneliness epidemic, and why it worries him more than job loss32:54 Manifesting the future: teaching AI to carry Indian classical music forward35:37 Closing line: "May there be resonance"