Business leadership in an AI world

Leading the machines...for now

Author

Andy Bryn
May 02, 2025

In partnership with

Read time 5 min

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Welcome to Amazon Unwrapped, a weekly newsletter where we feature a different Amazon expert each week to give you a fresh perspective on the platform from different viewpoints, with real actionable advice straight to your inbox.

TLDR

  • AI Is the New Default – Forward-thinking companies like Shopify now evaluate AI before hiring humans; leaders must justify why a job can’t be done by AI.

  • The Talent Game Is Changing – AI shrinks the gap between leaders and individual contributors; small teams and solo players can now operate at massive scale.

  • Non-Adoption Is a Leadership Failure – Business leaders who ignore AI tools are not just inefficient—they’re becoming irrelevant.

  • Lead by Example – Leaders need to be hands-on with AI, actively using, learning, and teaching these tools—not delegating their adoption.

  • Equip Your Team – Give your people access to tools, time for training, and space to experiment.

Introducing Andy

I’m Andy, this is my newsletter. This week I share my thoughts on what leadership looks like as AI eats the world.

A business leader’s role is to get results.

Pre-AI, this was done by assembling a team of skilled people, aligning them to a vision, and motivating them to execute. Recruiting, managing, and retaining talent was a core competency of a high-performing leader.

But the tide is turning. Recent memos from Shopify’s Tobi Lütke and Duolingo’s Luis von Ahn make it crystal clear: smart business leaders are rethinking the human-first approach. As Tobi put it, the new default is to try AI before hiring a human. Managers must now prove why AI can’t do a job.

This isn’t theory. This is happening now.

Every day, AI takes another bite out of the work that was once the sole domain of knowledge workers and does it 100x faster, 10x cheaper, around the clock, without PTO or performance reviews.

So what does this mean for leaders?

It means the gap between decision-makers and individual contributors is shrinking fast. With AI, ICs can move like small teams. And small teams can move like entire departments. Leaders can’t afford to sit back and delegate their way through this shift. They need to roll up their sleeves, learn the tools, and model what it means to be AI-native.

If you’re a business leader not actively using AI tools weekly, if you’re not learning, testing, and teaching your team how to use them—you’re falling behind.

It’s no longer acceptable to hide behind busy calendars and org charts. The future of leadership is hands-on, AI-literate, and fast-moving.

If your company is AI-first, you’re in a great spot. If it’s not, that’s also a gift. It’s your opportunity to lead the change. Bring AI to the table and you’ll either become indispensable or incredibly attractive to companies who already get it.

If you’re a business leader, your job isn’t just to use AI—it’s to make sure your team is equipped to use it too. That starts with getting everyone access to the right tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney, etc.), carving out time for training, and encouraging experimentation. Run internal AI hack days. Set up Slack channels to share prompts and use cases. Incentivize employees who automate part of their workflow. And most importantly, normalize learning out loud—let your team see you trying, failing, and improving with AI yourself. That’s what leadership looks like now.

 

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