The Leadership Revolution

When I first started working in technology, we typed records into massive mainframe computers with green and black monitors and printed the results onto green and white continuous-form paper. If you had a computer problem, you grabbed Dave from IT as you passed him in the cafeteria and asked him to take a look. Technology changed enormously over the decades that followed, but it changed at a pace an organization could plan around. The large systems I implemented took years to select, years to install, and years more before people truly used them effectively.

Then, at the end of November 2022, a company called OpenAI released a chatbot to the public. Within about two months, an estimated one hundred million people were using it, which made it the fastest-growing consumer application anyone had measured. No committee approved it. No one scheduled the training. People simply started using it, at home first and then at work. I had never seen anything like it in my career, and that speed is where this book has to begin.