Start where you are
If there’s one word that describes the state of the world right now, it’s “fast”.
Everything is moving at incredible speed, especially technology. Because of this pace, many leaders feel like they’re just about holding on, gradually falling behind while struggling to navigate a constantly shifting landscape.
Holding on and surviving isn’t enough, though. Things aren’t going to settle down. The level of disruption isn’t going to decrease. The world is fundamentally changing, and without deliberate investment in a new skill - the skill of leveraging technology to your advantage - you may find yourself without a place in what’s to come. The World Economic Forum’s most recent Future of Jobs report indicated that more than 50% of professionals will need to significantly retrain over the next few years, even if they stay in the same job.
Honestly, I think this is a conservative estimate
It’s not all bad news, though. You’re not too late. While the window of opportunity is closing, it remains ajar - for now. The most important thing is to start. Hesitation is a losing strategy. Wherever you are today on the technological learning curve, you must begin.
Over the course of this year, I’ve spoken to dozens of leaders in all kinds of organisations about the challenges and opportunities that AI and other technologies are creating. At first, I encountered a lot of heads buried in the sand. As they lowered their resistance, however, most of them ran into the same problem - where, exactly, to start.
Some ventured off enthusiastically to “learn AI”. This is a well-intentioned mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. It’s not possible to learn AI. There’s too much of it, and it’s moving too quickly. New tools hit the market every day, new models are released monthly, and no-one can really predict what’s next. If you try to drink from this particular fire hydrant, you’ll quickly drown.
Instead, choose a use case that you know well. Find a specific problem or opportunity that you have plenty of context on, and begin exploring what’s available to help you. Lead generation is a great example, and a bottleneck for many companies. In this area there are prospecting agents, outreach tools, sentiment analysis, AI-powered advertising platforms, even artificial sales reps. You might focus on customer service, increasing your production capacity, or any other task. By picking one and diving deep, you’ll not only come up with useful, tactical solutions, you’ll also develop foundational knowledge that can be applied to other areas.
As you tackle your chosen use case, start from where you are - because the reality is, wherever you are today is fine. If you’ve not used AI tools in any meaningful way, pick an LLM (Large Language Model - ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc) you like and start asking it questions. Learn how it responds to your enquiries and instructions. Teach yourself how to prompt effectively, providing context, specifying roles and welcoming clarifying questions. Understand that these tools aren’t like search engines - the first reply you receive may be underwhelming. By engaging in a conversation, you can generate deep, nuanced insights in a very short space of time.
Then, start creating custom GPTs, copilots or your chosen platform’s equivalent. One of the most useful things I’ve done is create a board of GPTs for each of my companies, including a Chair, CFO, COO, Chief Marketing Officer, and other roles. I write a report each month that I share with these GPTs and ask for feedback, ideas and questions - it’s a great way to challenge your thinking and identify blind spots.
These custom GPTs may eventually lead you to creating agents (which are really just the current term for automations) to perform specific, repetitive tasks, after which you may get into vibe coding to create applications and tools to deliver on more complex projects.
Most importantly, though, start where you are and work your way up.
You don’t need to spend money on a qualification or course - AI will teach you how to use AI. Be clear on what you want to achieve and ask your chosen platform to give you a step by step guide on the tools you can use, the approaches you can take and the specific execution of whatever it suggests. My CTO GPT was invaluable in building the Versapia prototype, from creating the product spec to providing specific instructions to feed into Replit (the vibe coding platform I used) and troubleshooting issues. I have no technical background, but after a few false starts was able to build a working application. While that may not be your goal, it’s something that wouldn’t have been possible even a year ago.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the change around you, you’re not the only one. You don’t need to become an expert overnight, but you do need to start learning the technologies that are shaping the world. One word of warning, though - don’t outsource your thinking. Resist the urge to reach for ChatGPT every time you do something. We’re already seeing wave upon wave of generic content flooding every social media platform, and the nature of AI tools means that they’re now learning from themselves, decreasing the amount of variety in the training data and making their output even more uniform. So, you must use the tools well, but one fact hasn’t changed - original thought remains your biggest competitive advantage. Keep developing that muscle too.
(P.S. If you know someone who needs to read this today, send it to them and encourage them to subscribe to the Versapiens blog. If you haven’t subscribed yet, come join us on our journey through the intersection between culture, technology and business.)