Welcome to For Leaders, your go-to source for essential leadership insights and perspectives shaping today's world.

In this week’s newsletter:

• Strategic Summaries: Key insights and takeaways on the importance of time management

• Words of Wisdom: A powerful leadership quote to inspire

• Leaders’ Library: What we’re reading this week

A curated community of leaders.

Strategic Summaries

A weekly roundup of the most interesting, useful and thought-provoking articles to help you be a better leader. This week we’re focusing on generative AI.

The current state of generative AI. AI thought leaders talk about the reality of adopting generative AI and how it will change the workplace. 

Our take: This article from the Vector Institute does a nice job of summarizing the current state of AI, its limitations and risks, as well as the revolutionary potential of the technology. 

Many employees and leaders are already using GPT-3 or GPT-4 at work, and jobs are expected to bifurcate into those that can be automated and those that cannot. But wide-scale enterprise adoption is a future prospect, as privacy issues and regulation still dominate discussions. 

An article summarizing a Vector Institute roundtable last October discusses some more practical tips for organizations. 

Key takeaway: While it’s easy to see the potential of generative AI to replace tasks – and even entire jobs – it’s important to remember that computers have been widely adopted in workplaces for 40 years and their efficiency hasn’t reduced working hours. We may even be working longer... 

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Distributed leadership. This article covers how generative AI is transforming how leaders lead. 

Our take: In which areas is generative AI affecting leadership the most? Decision making, problem solving, and democratization. 

While decisions were once made based on intuition and experience, these days leaders are likely tapping into the vast amounts of data available before making important decisions.  

This is a shift for leaders from being the primary source of knowledge to more of an orchestrator managing data-driven insights. 

In the area of problem solving, generative AI can be used to quickly search large data sets to identify patterns and solutions. This efficiency, coupled with humans' ability to understand things contextually, is a boon for innovation. 

Key takeaway: Going forward, it seems that this will lead to a more distributed approach to leadership. Leaders will be responsible for giving employees access to these tools and guiding teams to leverage them effectively. 

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Be clear about your goal. This practical article offers 10 starting points for leaders who want to use generative AI. 

Our take: There are so many ways to use generative AI in business, so we’ve highlighted one here from the article that is less frequently talked about. 

As the needs of physical office space change, companies may do well to re-think their workspaces.  

Generative AI surpasses the basic tools from layout software by compiling data about how many people are using spaces and when, and how they use that space.  

Its quick recommendations can help you decide what is needed (or not) in your physical workspace based on actual data gathered from the people who are using it. 

Key takeaway: When adopting generative AI, make sure to lead with a clear idea about what the goal of the project is. Otherwise, it’s easy to spend too much money on trendy applications that don’t make sense for your business. 

Words of Wisdom

One weekly, impactful quote for leaders.

Leaders’ Library

Every week, we share an interesting long-form piece of content to contemplate.

Today we’re reading Impromptu: Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI by Reid Hoffman with GPT-4. 

Last year, entrepreneur Reid Hoffman wanted to learn more about GPT-4 and set out to get to know how it worked. Can it really elevate humanity or are there just too many potential problems to contend with? 

His research process was unique: instead of reading about what learning language models can do, he used GPT-4 to co-write the book with him, revealing its strengths and weaknesses in action. 

It’s probably the first book to be written with GPT-4 and this in itself makes it a worthwhile read. Yet the insights he gains about what's possible using this technology are even more fascinating. 

Reid is offering the book as a free PDF, as well as selling it in bookstores.  

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you next week with more powerful leadership insights and inspiration.