Methods
of the Masters
A blog on the art & science of creative action.
The AI Multiplier: Why Your "Organic Capabilities" Matter More Than Ever
Your organization spent years building innovation capability. Now AI arrives, and folks ask: 'Should we keep investing in creativity, or redirect that budget to AI tools?' The answer will determine whether you dominate the next decade—or get left behind.
You're a Manager Now (But Most Don't Know It)
Satya Nadella, Brice Challamel, Garry Tan, and Andrej Karpathy agree: you just took on a new role at work, but nobody told you. Most people don't even know it yet. Are you one of them?
"Have You Tried AI?" The Answer Every Leader Should Give
What if the most powerful AI leadership move isn't answering your team's questions, but asking them one simple question instead? Five words that build capacity, create permission, and get you out of the bottleneck.
If You Were an AI, I'd Think You Were Terrible
There’s a dangerous double standard that's killing our AI collaboration: abrilliant friend makes an honest mistake? We easily overlooked it. But if AI had done the exactly same thing we’d be furious. We'd conclude AI is either incompetent or broken. Our loss.
Malpractice
Last email: did AI help? Last presentation: did you get AI feedback? Last difficult conversation: did you practice with AI first? If you're answering "no" to most of these, you're not behind on AI adoption. You're committing professional negligence.
The Recursive Loop: How Sharing Creates What's Worth Sharing
Most teams think they need more AI training. What they actually need is a loop: a reason to share, experiment, and learn in public. Here’s how to build that culture—one commitment at a time.
Update Your Priors
If the MIT study of AI failure rates surprised you, you need to update your priors. Innovation is about shots on goal, not perfect plans. Time to recalibrate how many attempts you’re making.
Admit You Don't Know: Reverse Mentorship With An AI Sherpa
Most leaders think credibility comes from having all the answers. In the AI era, it's the opposite—credibility comes from admitting you don't know and doing something about it. Here's how to become the kind of leader who can actually drive organizational change instead of just demanding it.
Be the Prompt: The One Thing AI Will Never Do (And Why That's Your Competitive Advantage)
AI can do almost anything you ask—faster and better than you imagined. But it will never do the one thing that makes you irreplaceable. Here, I share how a piece of career-saving advice from my dad, a billion-dollar insight from Sam Altman, and lessons from leaders like Meta’s Josh To reveal the skill that keeps you indispensable in an “agentic” era.
Stop Operating, Start Orchestrating: Why Innovation is Now a Parallel Process
Cleverly deploying AI is not merely speeding up innovation—it's unlocking a fundamentally different relationship with the creative process. Here’s how to shift from operation, to orchestration.
Don’t Be Fred! 8 Bad Habits to Lose in 2025
You know that moment when someone tells a story so perfectly out-of-step with the times that you laugh—then realize you're guilty of your own version? That's exactly what happened when Brice Challamel, Head of AI at Moderna, shared the origin of their company AI transformation mantra, "Don't be Fred".
What's Your Question? The Missing Skill That's Killing Innovation
Most organizations don’t fail at AI because of the tech. They fail because leaders reward critique over curiosity. Here’s how to flip the script before your next breakthrough dies in the room.
Hire Yourself
Much ink has been spilled about the plight of college graduates. Because of all the hand-wringing about entry-level positions disappearing and AI automation stealing opportunities, no one is saying the quiet part out loud:
No one wanted a "job" to begin with. In that sense, there's never been a better time to enter the job market.
From Efficiency to Impossibility: How the Trail Blazers Prove AI Creates Value, Not Just Captures It
Most companies get AI adoption wrong because they're trapped in "value capture" mode. Efficiency plays might deliver measurable ROI, but they’re essentially defensive moves, and defense alone doesn't put enough points on the board to win. The real competitive advantage comes from "value creation."
Innovation Doesn't Have to be Hard (I Just Watched AI Turn Torture Into Play)
Last week, I ran an innovation workshop for the thousandth time. But this time felt different. Every time I noticed that familiar moment where teams hit cognitive quicksand—where I'd normally say "this is the hard part, push through it"—something clicked. This is exactly when AI should step in.
Stop Fighting AI Glazing
Everyone’s panicking about “AI glazing.” But what if it’s a feature, not a bug? The creative industry's most successful practitioners understand something the rest of us are missing.
Train An AI Twin to Practice Difficult Human Conversations
I’ve been working on a radical new course at Stanford, which I’m excited to share more details on soon. In the meantime, sharing an early iteration of my thinking on the topic, in the form of my WSJ piece co-authored with the brilliant Kian Gohar.
Hit Reset: The Secret Productivity Hack Four AI Leaders Don't Want Their Teams to Know
This post marks my 200th edition of Methods of the Masters—and serves as a fitting bridge between my early focus on human creativity and more recent AI work. In an age of infinite AI inputs, our biology demands we cultivate equally intentional human disconnection strategies.
The Simple Power of Joy and Delight
Special guest post by Brendan Boyle, one of Stanford’s most beloved professors, acclaimed toy inventor, and founder of IDEO’s Toy Lab. He’s taught me more about play than anyone other than my own children.
The Ultimate AI Playbook: From Measuring Adoption to Delivering Impact
In five years, no one will care how many people logged into ChatGPT. They'll care about who used it to transform their work. The organizations that understand the difference between more use and better use are quietly outperforming their competitors-while everyone else celebrates meaningless "adoption" metrics.