An Engineering Leader’s Field Guide to the Leadership Paradigms AI Is Exposing
In a nutshell
Your engineers are faster with AI, but the business isn’t seeing the full value. In this book I argue that the organisation around the tools has to change too: who owns what, who approves it and what gets rewarded. The leaders carrying those changes have their own work to do, examining the assumptions they bring to decisions and learning to act differently. It is written for engineering leaders.
All 23 chapters are out, here and on LinkedIn. The death in the title is the old leadership paradigm and the identity built on it. Each axis chapter stands alone; if you’re new, start with chapter 1 below.
If you want the whole argument first, read the essay that became the book, about a 30-minute read. Who I am and how I coach are on my About page.
Come Prepared to Die: An Engineering Leader’s Field Guide to the Leadership Paradigms AI Is Exposing
Chapter 1 of Come Prepared to Die. Someone will soon offer your service as software. The old you will have to die along with the way you provide your service today.
Invisible paradigms and a practice that survives: Find the assumptions you can’t see, with help from people who watched
Chapter 2 of Come Prepared to Die. You decide through your paradigm, not with it, so you can’t see it. The practice that makes it visible uses the mirror, the Immunity Map and double-loop learning.
Output vs outcome: Judge engineering by what customers can now do, and tell the board
Chapter 9 of Come Prepared to Die. You shipped more this quarter than last, and your customers are no better off. Which number is the work actually being judged on?
Just This: Watch the real work before any framework tells you what to see
Chapter 11 of Come Prepared to Die. Every framework in this book is a tool for contact with what is, and a trap the moment you obey it instead of using it.
Socialised vs self-authoring vs self-transforming: See whether you can disagree with a confident voice, even an AI’s
Chapter 12 of Come Prepared to Die. Robert Kegan’s three developmental stages, and the capacity that lets a leader disagree with a confident voice, including an AI’s.
Analysis vs recognition: Keep the expertise your engineers need to catch AI’s mistakes
Chapter 13 of Come Prepared to Die. You list five options, score them against criteria, and pick the highest scoring. The experienced operator already knew what option to choose, their skill long since dropped below conscious thought.
Had by your assumptions vs having them: See the assumption behind the pattern that keeps surprising you
Chapter 21 of Come Prepared to Die. You’re surprised by your own pattern when it surfaces. The pattern was running you well before you saw it.
Recognition: what the leader sees in themselves, what recognition needs
Chapter 22 of Come Prepared to Die. A new self has been forming, and you can’t see all of it from the inside. Recognising it takes company.
Just this: what the organisation does with the leader who comes back
Chapter 23 of Come Prepared to Die. A leader comes back changed to a role built for the person they were before. The most senior leader is also the one who can build what receives that change.
Chris Gagné, AI Transformation Lead
All 23 chapters are out. To hear what comes next, subscribe to the Come Prepared to Die newsletter on LinkedIn.
The operating companion to this book is live: Minimum Viable Bureaucracy, a forkable field guide for running the organisation on the other side of the shift.