Machines do.
Use AI to remove repetitive work, reduce administrative burden, and create useful human capacity.
Forthcoming book
Frontline AI Leadership.
Machines do. Managers decide. Leaders develop.
Most AI books ask how technology can help us accomplish more. This one asks the next question: What should leaders do with the capacity AI creates?
Frontline AI Leadership is being developed as a practical leadership book about using AI not only for success, but for significance: better judgment, better coaching, stronger teams, deeper development, and more intentional human leadership.
The manuscript is still in development, and there is no retail preorder or publication date yet. The ideas are being tested through real operating experience, keynotes, research, and the evolving Frontline AI Leadership Field Guide.
In development
100% of author royalties reinvested in Team Members
Frontline AI Leadership
Machines do.
Managers decide.
Leaders develop.
Managers decide.
Leaders develop.
Jon Harmeling
Working title and subtitle
The core idea
AI can give leaders more time to lead and help them lead better.
The book is built around one durable framework and a deeper question: how do we use increasingly capable technology to build stronger human leaders and stronger human organizations?
Managers decide.
Use AI to improve thinking without surrendering context, judgment, boundaries, accountability, or consequences.
Leaders develop.
Use AI-created capacity and AI-assisted preparation to coach better, build stronger teams, develop people, and grow yourself.
Success and significance
AI should help us accomplish more. It should also help us become more.
Success is the productivity side: automating tasks, improving analysis, reducing friction, and creating capacity.
Significance is what leaders do with that capacity and capability: coaching people, developing future leaders, building trust, strengthening teams, preparing for human moments, and growing themselves.
A central principle of the book is simple: Use AI to prepare for human moments, not replace human moments.
Human Reinvestment
AI creates capacity. Leadership determines what that capacity becomes.
The book will explore how leaders measure the time AI gives back and deliberately reinvest it in people, Guests and customers, development, relationships, judgment, and higher-value work.
The author's commitment
The book itself should practice Human Reinvestment.
If I am going to write a book arguing that success should be reinvested into the significance of other people, I believe the book itself should do exactly that.
I intend to reinvest 100% of my author royalties from Frontline AI Leadership into the Team Members I lead, with a focus on education, development, opportunity, and helping people become more capable than they were before.
The exact mechanism will be finalized before publication with appropriate tax and legal guidance. The principle is already clear: the value created by this book should create value for the people who make my work possible.
Success is what the book achieves. Significance is what becomes possible for other people because it succeeded.
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Want the ideas before the book is finished?
The Frontline AI Leadership Field Guide is already live and will keep evolving as the book develops.