Josh Allred's Blog

I have talked to many nonprofit leaders over the last year who have it all wrong and are thinking about how they’re going to use AI.

The mindset at the top is: how do I replace my poor performers by implementing AI as quickly as possible?

The problem is the technology, which, while good, isn’t quite good at implementing what you have going just yet. Obviously, there are exceptions, like in the software tech industry.

The better mindset is, how do I use these tools to 10x my top performers? How do I give them the right tools and the time to learn so they can do their job better than they ever could imagine? And when they learn how to do this, the profits follow. Not by cutting costs and employees. But by investing in your best people to do their best work.

If you give a milkshake in a big cup to an eight-year-old that’s half full, someone with a fixed mindset would say, “It’s only halfway full.”

Give them the same amount of milkshake in a smaller cup, and all of a sudden, you have sparked joy.

It’s easy to chalk everything up to growth or to fixed mindsets and to assume everyone needs to adopt a growth mindset. But life is hard. And what I keep getting pulled into is the choice architecture used to deliver the information to change the interaction we are having.

Problems are everywhere.

They are endless. And we need people to solve them.

That didn’t change when humans invented the printing press, electricity, the internet, or AI.

There is always a cost to quitting something.

But the price isn’t so high that you can’t pay it.

The internet makes us think global.

Social media makes us think about status.

The job makes us think in bottom lines.

All these systems floating around to optimize one thing or another.

We don’t think enough about why optimization is the goal for more GDP, more clicks, more money.

Optimizing isn’t where we need to land. It isn’t the destination. And it probably isn’t part of the journey either. At least not as important as we make it out to be.

In the age of AI, it can feel like humans are becoming obsolete. I don’t see it that way. People are miserable with the work that code and LLMs can now handle for us so that we can be free to exercise good judgment, craft a better story, show we have good taste, connect people, change the emotion in the room, be creative, and so on.

What I think this tech does is allow us to have an honest conversation about what work we do matters and what is just bullshit. Unfortunately, for many of us, it’s more than we like to admit.

But not everyone is productive.

The way we use our time is a signal of what we value.

The universe doesn’t conspire against us. It doesn’t try to make us lonely or feel pain. That’s the human condition. We all experience it. The unequal distribution of it can make it feel so much worse. If only we had that one thing…Keeping account of what we are missing in our lives only highlights it and closes our eyes to what we do have.

Is the phenomenon where we hear ideas that contradict our worldview, reject the data and evidence, only to return to what is familiar.

Change is scary. And when the world feels under existential threat, the easy answer is to resist. To hunker down. And wait for a return of what is familiar.

It’s difficult to grow up thinking the world is one way and then find out it’s another. It’s also difficult to see the end of the road. But no matter how much we try to fight gravity, we just can’t.

When we anchor ourselves to our lens in how we see the world, to find clarity, watch it stand still, we can’t be shocked when it moves again. Life is a moving target. Which means if it is insufficient, it can get better too.

Coming up with a solution isn’t the hard part anymore.

Little Cottonwood skiing suffers on powder days, let’s create public transportation that works.

The Great Salt Lake is collapsing, let’s examine how alfalfa farms are using too much water.

Time to draw new district lines, have it done by committee.

We have the solutions. We have the technology. And yet these problems persist. Why?

Coordination is the problem. Incentive structures. Allowing bad behavior. Not evolving with the times.

The blueprints are easy. The step-by-step instructions can be completed in a day. What we find, though, is that what the masses want isn’t what someone with some pull wants to.