---
title: "Has AI Killed Servant Leadership?"
episode: 31
podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast"
publisher: "LeanScale"
guest: "Michael Preuss"
guest_title: "VP of Marketing, VRIFY"
date_published: 2025-10-28
date_modified: 2026-07-22
duration: 00:55:54
word_count: 9621
topics: ["sales-leadership", "ai-in-gtm", "gtm-strategy", "revenue-operations", "demand-generation"]
canonical_url: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/michael-preuss-active-leadership-ai/
source: "LeanScale Podcast Knowledge Hub — https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app"
license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast."
---

# Has AI Killed Servant Leadership?

_Michael Preuss on active leadership, AI-first teams, and building in the wartime era_

**Episode 31 · The LeanScale Podcast**  
Michael Preuss, VP of Marketing, VRIFY · Hosted by Anthony Enrico  
Published October 28, 2025 · Updated July 22, 2026 · 00:55:54  
Canonical: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/michael-preuss-active-leadership-ai/

**Topics:** Sales Leadership · AI in GTM · GTM Strategy · Revenue Operations · Demand Generation


## Executive summary

The dominant leadership philosophy of the last tech decade was servant leadership: hire great people and get out of their way. Michael Preuss — VP of Marketing at VRIFY, a verticalized-AI company building the DORA mineral-discovery platform — argues that model is dead, and AI delivered the final blow. His logic is simple and uncomfortable: if you build agentic systems that execute without emotions, mentorship needs, or career aspirations, then serving the people underneath you starts to unravel. Who are you serving when the doer is an agent? This conversation with LeanScale co-founder Anthony Enrico is a working operator's field guide to leading, hiring, and building teams once the free-money era ends and AI reshapes what a team even is.

Michael's credibility is a builder's, not a theorist's. This is the fourth team he has built — his own digital/e-commerce agency, a product-design team for Lululemon's e-commerce business, a growth-marketing team at GitLab, and now go-to-market at VRIFY. He came up through roughly a decade of front-end engineering, which is why his answers are less about leadership abstractions and more about operating systems: strategy and execution as an inseparable pair, effort that compounds so one plus one equals five, and a wartime bias for speed and precision. Borrowing Ben Horowitz, he frames the last 12 years as 'peacetime' and today as 'wartime' — and says only the genuinely productive companies survive the transition.

The replacement for servant leadership he calls active leadership: lead from the front, believe no job is too small, and get back to doing the work instead of managing away from it. Two ideas anchor it. First, 'micro-interested' (a term he credits to Rippling COO Ian McInnis) — the missing middle between micromanaging and absentee leadership, where you get close to a work stream to build context and coach, then step back once you see consistency, because to Michael 'consistency over time equals trust.' Second, a contrarian coaching stance: spend your time on your best performers, not your strugglers, because you get far more leverage 5x-ing a top performer in the right seat than squeezing 10% out of someone in the wrong one. He layers in Good to Great's bus metaphor with his own addition — you must design the right seats, not just fill them — and a mentor's rule that you have about 120 days to make your people decisions before the team's output is on you.

The middle of the hour turns to a problem Michael and Anthony both wrestle with honestly: AI is evaporating the junior-execution layer where careers used to start, mentors used to form, and mid-career leaders used to stay plugged into what's 'cool.' Michael's hedges are practical — develop taste (the judgment to know whether AI's output is good, which AI itself doesn't have), and rebuild the on-ramp through agencies, which fit the 'new lean startup' where zero-to-$10M companies with tiny teams outsource well-defined 'wrapped present' work and keep the ambiguous 'plate of spaghetti' in-house. For anyone navigating their own path, he offers 'career market fit' (the market may see you more clearly than you see yourself) and a rule to know the neighborhood you're heading to rather than the exact destination.

He closes with the operating cadence he runs: quarterly OKRs with an above/below-the-line priority cut and deliberate slack time, two-week to-do/doing/done sprints with reviews, retros, and a Friday 20% block, and a monthly company-wide all-hands that turns internal work into shipped work. The connective tissue is a phrase from Rita McGrath's Seeing Around Corners — 'the snow melts first from the edges' — a mandate to push decisions to the people closest to the work. Who should listen: founders re-architecting for efficiency, sales and marketing leaders rethinking how they coach and staff, and any operator trying to lead humans well in an AI-first, wartime company.


## Key takeaways

1. **AI didn't kill servant leadership alone — the end of free money did, and AI finished it** — The 12-year zero-interest-rate 'bull run' made 'hire great people and get out of their way' viable; when capital tightened and revenue-per-FTE became the North Star, passive leadership was already on the ropes. AI delivered the final blow: if agentic systems execute with no emotions or career aspirations, 'who are we serving?'
   _Why it matters:_ Stop optimizing for team comfort at the expense of output and re-anchor leadership on accountability, speed, and outcomes.
   _For:_ Founders, Sales Leaders, RevOps Leaders

2. **Replace servant leadership with 'active leadership' — lead from the front, no job too small** — Active leadership means embodying the work rather than delegating away from it. Michael throws away the stray coffee cup at the event his team runs, and builds custom GPTs himself because he holds the most company context. The natural career path toward people-management pulls you away from the work; AI is a chance to come back to it.
   _Why it matters:_ Senior leaders create more value doing high-context work than managing politics — get back onto the field.
   _For:_ Founders, Sales Leaders, Marketing Leaders

3. **Treat every company as peacetime or wartime — and know we're at war** — Borrowing Ben Horowitz's peacetime/wartime CEO idea, Michael argues the last 12 years were peacetime (stable, predictable, growth-at-all-costs) and today is wartime — speed, precision, and survival. Free-money multiples and easy acquisitions are gone; only the most productive, profitable companies make it to the next level.
   _Why it matters:_ Wartime demands smaller, faster teams, tighter priorities, and a bias to ship over polish.
   _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives

4. **Build AI-first teams with a change-management ritual, then flatten** — Michael has everyone put a Post-it on their monitor: 'How can AI help me do what I'm about to do?' Retraining individuals lets the team shrink and simplify — people who would have been people-leaders three years ago now do the work at high velocity, which he finds more fulfilling.
   _Why it matters:_ AI adoption is a behavior-change problem first; the org-design payoff (flatter, leaner) follows the habit.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Marketing Leaders, Founders

5. **Be micro-interested, not micromanaging** — Credit to Rippling COO Ian McInnis. There's a middle ground between smothering and absent: get close to a work stream to build context and coach, then step back and grant autonomy once you see consistency. More face-time signals concern, not favoritism — and Michael tells his team so explicitly.
   _Why it matters:_ Name the behavior openly so proximity reads as investment and coaching, not surveillance.
   _For:_ Sales Leaders, Marketing Leaders, RevOps Leaders

6. **Trust is consistency over time — so coach your best performers, not your strugglers** — Michael's equation is 'consistency over time equals trust.' And counter to instinct, strength-based orgs invest in top performers — like a coach who spends the most time with the best athlete — rather than pouring hours into someone who is simply a poor fit for the role.
   _Why it matters:_ Audit where your coaching hours go; you get more leverage 5x-ing a top performer than extracting 10% from the wrong seat.
   _For:_ Sales Leaders, Marketing Leaders, RevOps Leaders

7. **Get the right people on the bus, in the right seats — and design the right seats** — Michael loves Good to Great's bus metaphor but says the missing piece is designing the seats themselves — the actual jobs — which is changing fast as AI absorbs execution roles. He also warns that a flat performer a year later is below the line because the company improved; you have to out-improve the business to keep your seat.
   _Why it matters:_ Revisit role design, not just staffing, and set the expectation that standing still is falling behind.
   _For:_ Founders, Sales Leaders, RevOps Leaders

8. **Make your people decisions inside the first ~120 days — then own the outcome, kindly** — A mentor's rule: you have about 100–120 days in a new role to make your people and structure changes; after that the output is your fault or your benefit. Do it early, thoughtfully, and humanely — bake severance into the budget, be a great reference. Most people know when they're doing a medium job and feel relieved.
   _Why it matters:_ Delaying hard people calls forfeits your right to complain about the team you built.
   _For:_ Founders, Sales Leaders, Revenue Executives

9. **The junior-execution layer is evaporating — protect the on-ramp and build taste** — AI is absorbing the entry-level roles where people once learned skills, found mentors, and made economic sense. That breaks the talent pipeline and, for mid-career leaders, the connection to what's 'cool.' Michael's hedge is taste — the judgment to know whether AI's output is good — because AI takes prompts, it doesn't have taste.
   _Why it matters:_ Deliberately recreate junior on-ramps (often via agencies) and treat taste as a durable, teachable competitive edge.
   _For:_ Founders, Marketing Leaders, RevOps Leaders

10. **Agencies are the new junior on-ramp — and should sell customer-focused, not solution-focused** — Well-defined, 'wrapped present' work can go to junior talent at agencies; ambiguous 'plate of spaghetti' work stays in-house. In the 'new lean startup,' zero-to-$10M companies with tiny teams will outsource heavily. Winning agencies pick a customer and stack solutions (LeanScale's approach), compounding trust into an easy button the buyer can just press.
   _Why it matters:_ If you run or buy from agencies, optimize for a trusted, expanding partnership over one-off project bids.
   _For:_ Founders, Marketing Leaders

11. **Chase 'career market fit' and know the neighborhood, not the destination** — Michael doesn't call himself a marketer, but the market does — that's career market fit, and ignoring it would be silly. Early on he chased brand logos (Starbucks, Nike) to build perceived credibility. His rule: know the neighborhood you're heading toward and take any avenue pointed that way; don't wait tables for the straight line.
   _Why it matters:_ Optimize for direction and reputation-building work — and follow Munger: the best way to get new work is to focus on the work on your desk.
   _For:_ Founders, Sales Leaders, Marketing Leaders

12. **Run a quarterly-sprint-monthly cadence — and let the snow melt from the edges** — Three frameworks: quarterly OKRs with an above/below-the-line priority cut and built-in slack time (so you can say no with kindness and yes to the CEO's fire drill); two-week to-do/doing/done sprints with review, retro, and a Friday 20% block; and a monthly company-wide all-hands that forces public shipping. Push decisions to those closest to the work — 'the snow melts first from the edges.'
   _Why it matters:_ A lightweight operating system plus edge-empowered autonomy delivers predictable velocity without heavy management overhead.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Sales Leaders, Marketing Leaders


## Frameworks

### Active Leadership (02:12)

**Definition:** The replacement for servant leadership: lead from the front, believe no job is too small, and do the high-context work yourself instead of managing away from it.

Michael argues the passive 'hire great people and get out of their way' model breaks in a lean, AI-first, wartime company — partly because you can't be the servant to agentic systems that have no emotions or career aspirations. Active leadership pulls senior people back onto the field where trust, precision, and speed are created.

### Peacetime vs. Wartime Company (04:20)

**Definition:** A lens (adapted from Ben Horowitz's peacetime/wartime CEO) that treats the last 12 zero-interest-rate years as peacetime — stable, predictable, growth-at-all-costs — and today as wartime, defined by speed, precision, and survival.

In wartime, work is important and has purpose, capital is scarce, and only the most productive and profitable companies advance. The mental shift reshapes team size, prioritization, and the bias toward shipping.

### The AI-First Team Post-It (06:25)

**Definition:** A change-management ritual: every team member keeps a Post-it on their main screen that reads 'How can AI help me do what I'm about to do?' — retraining individual behavior before restructuring the org.

The habit lets the team flatten and simplify; people who would have become people-leaders instead stay close to the work at high velocity. AI adoption is treated as a behavior problem first, with the leaner org as the downstream payoff.

### Micro-Interested, Not Micromanaging (11:33)

**Definition:** The missing middle between micromanaging and absentee leadership (credited to Rippling COO Ian McInnis): get close to a work stream to build context and coach, then step back and grant autonomy once you see consistency.

Because 'micromanager' is binary and negative, there was no language for healthy proximity. Michael tells his team that more of his attention signals concern about the work, not favoritism — and that once trust is established he deliberately moves back out and lets people run.

### Trust = Consistency Over Time (13:30)

**Definition:** Michael's operating equation for trust: consistency over time equals trust. You earn the right to grant autonomy by observing consistent delivery, not by title or tenure.

It underpins the micro-interested loop — get close, watch for consistency, then step back — and it reframes coaching hours as an investment that should flow to the people who have demonstrated (or have the ceiling to demonstrate) consistency.

### The Right People, the Right Seats — and Designing the Seats (17:22)

**Definition:** Jim Collins's Good to Great bus metaphor (get the right people on the bus, in the right seats), extended with Michael's addition: you must design the seats themselves — the actual jobs — not just fill them.

As AI absorbs execution roles, job design changes rapidly and becomes one of the hardest parts of leadership. Michael pairs it with a warning that a flat performer is below the line a year later because the company improved — you have to out-improve the business to keep your seat.

### The 120-Day People-Decision Window (19:26)

**Definition:** A mentor's rule that a new leader has roughly 100–120 days to make their people and structure decisions; after that window, the team's output is the leader's own fault or benefit.

Make the calls early, thoughtfully, and kindly — budget severance, be a good reference, and remember most people know when they're doing a medium job and are relieved to move on. Past 120 days you lose the right to complain about a team you chose to keep.

### Taste: The Judgment AI Can't Prompt (26:30)

**Definition:** Taste is the human judgment to know whether AI's output is actually good. AI takes prompts and shows you a thing; determining if that thing is good is a nuance and sophistication AI doesn't have.

Michael frames taste as partly innate but developable — by looking at beautiful things, using well-designed products, and experiencing high-quality work. As the junior-execution layer disappears, taste becomes a durable differentiator worth cultivating deliberately.

### The Present vs. The Plate of Spaghetti (28:52)

**Definition:** A model for what to outsource: well-defined work is a neatly wrapped present you can hand to an agency (or junior talent); ambiguous, high-context work is a plate of spaghetti where the noodles are snakes and you need the plate back.

Drawn from Michael's Lululemon work with the agency MetaLab, it argues the well-scoped 'present' work is the natural on-ramp for early-career talent at agencies, while the messy internal work stays in-house — a key mechanic of the 'new lean startup.'

### Career Market Fit & Knowing the Neighborhood (32:49)

**Definition:** Career market fit is the idea that the market may see your value more clearly than you see it yourself (Michael leads go-to-market but the market thinks of him as a marketer). Paired with it: know the neighborhood you're heading toward, not the exact destination, and take any avenue pointed that way.

Early in a career it justifies chasing credibility-building logos and opportunities that point in the right direction rather than waiting for a straight line. It rhymes with the Munger line Michael loves — the best way to get new work is to focus on the work on your desk.

### The Quarterly-Sprint-Monthly Operating Cadence (42:12)

**Definition:** A three-layer operating system: quarterly OKRs with an above/below-the-line priority cut and built-in slack time; two-week to-do/doing/done sprints with a Monday plan, Friday check-in, Thursday review + retro, and a Friday 20% block; and a monthly company-wide all-hands to prove what shipped.

The above/below-the-line cut lets a leader say no with kindness (reprioritization is a shared conversation) and yes to a CEO fire drill via slack time, preserving predictable velocity. The monthly ship forum turns internal work into public, career-visible output and enforces urgency.

### The Snow Melts First From the Edges (41:31)

**Definition:** A phrase from Rita McGrath's Seeing Around Corners: those closest to the work make the best, fastest decisions, while decisions made far from the work are colder and slower.

Michael uses it as a mandate for transparency and edge-empowered autonomy — build frameworks that give the people nearest a problem the context and authority to decide quickly and accurately. It doubles as one more knock on servant-based leadership, which drifts leaders away from the work.


## Quotes

_Speakers inferred from an undiarized transcript — verify before attributing._

> "While I do think AI has killed servant-based leadership, I think it was already on the ropes. Once the zero-percent interest rate era ended, money started becoming a little harder to come by."
>
> — Michael Preuss, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 31 (01:26)

> "AI doesn't have career aspirations. So if you're the servant to the AI, and we have these agentic systems that are just built to do and accomplish and don't have emotions — who are we serving?"
>
> — Michael Preuss, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 31 (02:12)

> "I ask everyone on my team to write a Post-it note and put it on their main screen that says, 'How can AI help me do what I'm just about to do?'"
>
> — Michael Preuss, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 31 (06:25)

> "No one likes a micromanager — it appropriately has a negative connotation. This 'micro-interested' concept was the first time I'd come across someone putting language to what's in between that gap."
>
> — Michael Preuss, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 31 (12:13)

> "Trust, to me, the equation is consistency over time equals trust."
>
> — Michael Preuss, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 31 (13:30)

> "The best performers get the most attention, and the best performers maybe get a little bit more critical feedback — because they know that person is just trying to make them the best they can be."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 31 (15:21)

> "At a certain point you have no right to complain about your team, because your job is to make your team."
>
> — Michael Preuss, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 31 (20:12)

> "AI doesn't have taste. AI takes prompts, AI shows you a thing, and then you have to determine if that's good or not."
>
> — Michael Preuss, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 31 (26:30)

> "I have three kids now — I'm not cool, and I don't know what cool looks like."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 31 (27:16)

> "I'm not going to sit as a barista at my local coffee shop waiting for the straight line to where I'm going to go."
>
> — Michael Preuss, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 31 (32:08)

> "This concept of career market fit kind of bubbled up to me. I don't necessarily think of myself as a marketer, but the market thinks of me as a marketer."
>
> — Michael Preuss, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 31 (32:49)

> "The best way to get new work is to focus on the work that's on your desk."
>
> — Michael Preuss, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 31 (34:37)

> "I would not have been able to start LeanScale if I wasn't a remote worker. It just would not have been possible."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 31 (37:09)

> "Speed kills your competition if you're moving faster than them. Lack of speed kills your company."
>
> — Michael Preuss, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 31 (41:31)

> "The snow melts first from the edges — those closest to the work are going to make the best, fastest decisions."
>
> — Michael Preuss, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 31 (41:31)

> "Marketing without sales is just promotion — and that's not really what I love doing. I love growing businesses."
>
> — Michael Preuss, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 31 (52:47)


## Practical advice by role

### Founders

- Operate like it's wartime, not peacetime: fund the most productive, precise version of the company, not the biggest headcount — only genuinely effective, profitable companies survive the end of the free-money era.
- Make your people and org-design decisions inside the first ~120 days, do them kindly (budget severance, be a great reference), and accept that after that window the team's output is on you.
- Protect the junior on-ramp AI is erasing — build economic ways to bring in early-career talent (often via agencies) so you and your org stay plugged into taste, culture, and the next generation.

### Sales Leaders

- Lead from the front — no job too small. Do high-context work yourself instead of managing away from it; proximity to the work is where trust and speed come from.
- Be micro-interested, not micromanaging: get close to a work stream to build context and coach, then step back and grant autonomy once you see consistency over time.
- Spend your coaching hours on your best performers, not your strugglers — you get far more leverage 5x-ing a top performer in the right seat than extracting 10% from someone in the wrong one.

### Marketing Leaders

- Run an AI-first team: install a change-management ritual ('How can AI help me do what I'm about to do?'), then flatten and get people back to the work at high velocity.
- Build custom GPTs yourself where you hold the most company context, rather than pushing the job down for lower precision.
- Obsess over precision — words and phrases have power, and concise, precise communication multiplies the whole org's effectiveness. And remember: marketing without sales is just promotion.

### RevOps Leaders

- Install a lightweight operating cadence: quarterly OKRs with an above/below-the-line cut and built-in slack time, two-week to-do/doing/done sprints with review and retro, and a monthly all-hands that forces public shipping.
- Push decisions to the people closest to the work — 'the snow melts first from the edges' — and design frameworks that give teams the context and autonomy to decide fast and accurately.
- Design the seats, not just the staffing: revisit whether the jobs themselves are still the right ones for a leaner, AI-augmented org.


## AI takeaways

**Thesis:** AI didn't just change how we work — it changed how we lead. Agentic systems execute without motivation, mentorship, or career aspirations, which breaks the servant-leadership model and forces a shift to 'active leadership': leaner, faster, more accountable teams where humans supply the taste, judgment, and precision AI can't.

- **AI is the final blow to servant leadership** — The passive 'hire great people and get out of their way' model was already failing when free money ended; AI finishes it — you can't be the servant to a system that has no emotions or career goals.
- **AI-first teams start with behavior change** — A Post-it ritual ('How can AI help me do what I'm about to do?') retrains individuals; the flatter, leaner org is the downstream payoff of the habit, not the starting point.
- **Taste is the human moat** — AI takes prompts and shows you a thing; it can't tell you whether the thing is good. Judgment and taste — developed through exposure to well-made things — is the durable differentiator.
- **The junior layer is collapsing** — AI is absorbing entry-level execution roles, breaking the traditional career on-ramp and threatening both the talent pipeline and mid-career leaders' connection to what's 'cool.'
- **Build it yourself where you hold the context** — Michael builds his own company-context custom GPTs because delegating them lowers precision — the person with the most context should train the model.

**Agent & automation ideas**

- Company-context custom GPTs trained by the leader who holds the most context, used to draft high-precision assets (positioning, briefs, plans) for a lean team.
- An AI-first onboarding ritual and checklist that prompts every recurring task with 'how can AI accelerate this?' and tracks which workflows get automated over time.
- A junior-talent 'agency in a box': well-defined, wrapped-present work packages that AI-augmented early-career people (or partner agencies) can execute to keep the career on-ramp open.


## Operations takeaways

### Revenue operations

- **Peacetime to wartime operating model.** Reorganize for speed and precision: smaller teams, tighter priorities, a bias to ship. Only the most productive, profitable companies survive the end of the free-money era.
- **Above/below-the-line prioritization.** Quarterly OKRs with a hard priority cut plus built-in slack time let you say no with kindness (reprioritization is a shared conversation) and yes to the CEO's fire drill without breaking velocity.
- **Edge-empowered decisions.** 'The snow melts first from the edges' — build frameworks that give the people closest to the work the context and authority to decide fast and accurately.
- **Design the seats.** Good to Great gets you the right people in the right seats; the missing step is designing the seats themselves for a leaner, AI-augmented org.
- **Ship in public.** A monthly company-wide all-hands turns internal work into shipped work by giving everyone a visible forum and accountability.


## Metrics mentioned

| Value | Metric | Context |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 12 years | Servant-leadership era | The 12-year zero-interest-rate 'bull run' in tech where 'hire great people and get out of their way' worked — the peacetime era Michael says is now over. |
| <1% | Mineral projects that pay off | Less than one percent of mineral-exploration projects find anything economically viable — the needle-in-a-haystack problem VRIFY's DORA AI platform attacks. |
| $0 → $10M in 30 days | Zero to scale | AI-native app builders like Lovable going from zero to $10M with tiny teams — Michael's evidence for the 'new lean startup.' |
| ~120 days | People-decision window | A mentor's rule: you have roughly 100–120 days in a new leadership role to make your people and structure decisions; after that, the team's output is on you. |
| 2-week sprints + 20% time | Execution cadence | Michael's engine: two-week to-do/doing/done sprints (Monday plan, Friday check-in, Thursday review + retro) with a Friday '20% time' block for self-directed work. |
| 'tens of millions' | Sam Altman on politeness | Sam Altman noted OpenAI spends tens of millions on users saying 'please' and 'thank you' — pure execution needs no motivation, unlike people, though he called it an investment worth making. |


## Entities mentioned

- **VRIFY** (company) — Michael's current employer; he leads go-to-market (marketing and sales). VRIFY builds verticalized AI for mineral exploration, and recently released DORA, its AI-assisted mineral-discovery platform for geoscientists. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/vrify/
- **Lululemon** (company) — Where Michael built a product-design team for the e-commerce business and led the internal team on an e-commerce project alongside the agency MetaLab — the source of his 'present vs. plate of spaghetti' model. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/lululemon/
- **GitLab** (company) — Where Michael built a growth-marketing team (inbound and the digital web experience) and first ran the quarterly-OKR / two-week-sprint / monthly-ship operating cadence; also where a much-younger teammate reshaped how he thinks about work. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/gitlab/
- **Rippling** (company) — Cited as the company where COO Ian McInnis originated the 'micro-interested' concept Michael adopted as the healthy middle ground between micromanaging and hands-off leadership. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/rippling/
- **MetaLab** (company) — The design agency Michael worked with while leading an internal e-commerce project at Lululemon; the 'wrapped present' handed to the agency vs. the 'plate of spaghetti' kept in-house illustrates well-defined vs. ambiguous work. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/metalab/
- **LeanScale** (company) — Host Anthony's firm; Good to Great is mandatory reading and a decision framework, severance is baked into the budget, and remote work made starting the company possible. Cited as the model for customer-focused (not solution-focused) agencies. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/company/leanscale/
- **Michael Preuss** (person, guest) — VP of Marketing at VRIFY (AI mineral discovery); builder-operator who's led growth and design teams at GitLab and Lululemon and champions 'active leadership' in the AI era. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/guest/michael-preuss/
- **Anthony Enrico** (person, host) — Co-founder of LeanScale and host of The LeanScale Podcast. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/guest/anthony-enrico/
- **ChatGPT** (tool, AI Assistant) — Michael builds custom GPTs trained on company context himself, arguing the person with the most context produces the highest-precision model rather than pushing the job down the org.
- **Cursor** (tool, AI Dev Tool) — Named among the 'idea to product' AI tools (with Replit and Lovable) that let individuals build software fast — part of Michael's case that the junior-execution layer is collapsing.
- **Replit** (tool, AI Dev Tool) — Cited alongside Cursor as tooling that takes people 'from idea to product so fast,' evidence for the 'new lean startup.'
- **Lovable** (tool, AI App Builder) — Cited as an example of AI-native companies going from $0 to $10M in 30 days with tiny teams — the fastest proof of how quickly idea becomes product.
- **LinkedIn** (tool, Social Platform) — Michael's preferred place to connect ('find me on LinkedIn'); he also uses LinkedIn to check in on former reports he had to let go and finds them relieved.


## FAQ

**Q: Has AI killed servant leadership?**

A: Michael Preuss argues yes — but AI only delivered the final blow. Servant leadership ('hire great people and get out of their way') was already failing once the zero-interest-rate era ended and revenue-per-FTE became the priority. AI finished it: if agentic systems execute with no emotions or career aspirations, the model of serving the people underneath you starts to unravel — who are you serving when the doer is an agent?

**Q: What is 'active leadership'?**

A: Active leadership is Michael's replacement for servant leadership: leaders lead from the front, believe no job is too small, and do high-context work themselves rather than managing away from it. In a lean, AI-first, wartime company, senior people create more value back on the field — building the custom GPTs, shipping the work, and staying close to where trust, precision, and speed are actually created.

**Q: What does 'micro-interested' mean and how is it different from micromanaging?**

A: Micro-interested (a term Michael credits to Rippling COO Ian McInnis) is the healthy middle ground between micromanaging and absentee leadership. You get close to a specific work stream to build context and coach, then step back and grant autonomy once you see consistency. Michael tells his team directly that more of his attention signals concern about the work, not favoritism — and that 'consistency over time equals trust.'

**Q: Should managers spend more time with their best or their worst performers?**

A: With their best. Michael and Anthony argue that, like a coach who invests most in the top athlete, a strength-based organization should pour coaching hours into its highest-ceiling people. You get far more leverage 5x-ing a top performer who is in the right seat than trying to extract 10% more from someone who is simply a poor fit — that person is usually better served finding a role where they can thrive.

**Q: Where should someone start their career now that AI is eliminating junior roles?**

A: Michael suggests the agency path. Well-defined, 'wrapped present' work can go to junior talent at agencies, while ambiguous, high-context work stays in-house — so agencies become the new on-ramp where early-career people get exposure to many problems before moving in-house. He also advises building 'taste' (the judgment AI lacks) and, for the boldest, building in public with AI tools like Replit, Cursor, and Lovable.

**Q: What is 'career market fit'?**

A: Career market fit is Michael's analog to product-market fit: the market may recognize your value more clearly than you recognize it yourself. He leads go-to-market and doesn't think of himself as a marketer, but the market thinks of him as one — so continuing down that path made obvious sense. The companion rule is to know the neighborhood you're heading toward rather than the exact destination, and take any avenue pointed that way.

**Q: What operating frameworks help a lean team move faster?**

A: Michael runs three: quarterly OKRs with an above/below-the-line priority cut and built-in slack time (so you can say no with kindness and yes to a CEO fire drill); two-week to-do/doing/done sprints with a Monday plan, Friday check-in, Thursday review and retro, and a Friday 20% block; and a monthly company-wide all-hands that forces the team to ship publicly. Together they deliver predictable velocity with minimal management overhead.

**Q: What does 'the snow melts first from the edges' mean for leadership?**

A: It's a phrase from Rita McGrath's Seeing Around Corners that Michael uses as a mandate: the people closest to the work make the best, fastest decisions, while decisions made far from the work are slower and colder. Practically, it means pushing authority and context to the edges of the org and designing frameworks that let front-line people decide quickly and accurately — the opposite of drifting away from the work.


## Timeline

- **00:00** — "AI has killed servant leadership"
- **01:26** — Why servant leadership was already on the ropes
- **02:12** — Active leadership: if you serve the AI, who are you serving?
- **04:20** — Peacetime vs. wartime companies
- **06:25** — AI-first teams and flattening the org
- **10:13** — Precision and building your own custom GPTs
- **11:33** — Micro-interested vs. micromanaging
- **13:30** — Trust = consistency over time; coach your best performers
- **17:22** — Good to Great: the right people, and the right seats
- **19:26** — The 120-day people-decision window
- **22:43** — The vanishing junior-execution layer
- **25:27** — Replit, Cursor, Lovable, and building taste
- **28:52** — The agency opportunity and the new lean startup
- **32:08** — Know the neighborhood; career market fit
- **34:37** — Munger: focus on the work on your desk
- **40:10** — Frameworks to implement: OKRs, sprints, monthly ship
- **41:31** — "The snow melts first from the edges"
- **48:32** — Precision, accountability, and wartime
- **51:52** — What Michael's building at VRIFY: DORA
- **54:46** — Where to connect and close


## Related episodes

- **Ep. 95: Why AI Means More RevOps Hires, Not Fewer** (Jimmy O'Halloran) — The direct sibling to Michael's thesis — a productivity gain should grow the team and speed, not shrink headcount. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/jimmy-ohalloran-new-relic-revops-consumption-revenue/
- **Ep. 85: Why AI + GTM Engineers Can't Replace RevOps** (Tessa Whittaker) — AI augments human judgment rather than replacing it — the same 'taste and judgment are the moat' argument Michael makes. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/tessa-whittaker-ai-gtm-engineers-revops/
- **Ep. 88: Why AI Won't Close Your Biggest Deals** (Michael Kiernan) — A CRO's case that human relationships stay central in an AI-first GTM, pairing with Michael's 'humans supply what AI can't.' · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/michael-kiernan-nextdoor-ai-wont-close-deals/
- **Ep. 91: Why Outcome-Based Pricing Is a Trap for Most AI Companies** (Roee Hartuv) — Both frame how the end of the free-money era reshapes GTM economics and forces a harder look at what actually drives value. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/roee-hartuv-outcome-based-pricing-trap/
- **Ep. 15: Where Should RevOps Report?** (LeanScale) — Org-design companion to Michael's 'design the seats,' flatten-the-org, and 120-day people-decision material. · https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/cameron-legge-where-revops-report/


## Full transcript

_Machine-transcribed and not diarized; speaker attribution is inferred._  
_Transcript only, as a separate file: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/michael-preuss-active-leadership-ai/transcript.md_

### 00:00 — "AI has killed servant leadership"

**[0:00]** We have Michael Proys here today, VP of Marketing at Verify. So excited to have you, and especially for what we're talking about today. In a world of flattening orgs, AI, revenue per FTE, being the North Star for a lot of startups, I think one of the most prominent leadership styles, servant leadership, has grown to be something that is not quite as effective as it used to be. And I know when you and I have talked before scheduling this time, you mentioned AI has killed servant leadership. And I just want to dive deeper into what you mean by that and what we should do

**[0:45]** about it. Yeah, thanks, Anthony. Really, really excited to be here with you. I'm looking forward to a really rich conversation here. And we, all the global we, we did servant-based leadership for a long time, 12 years, 12-year bull run in tech. Everything was good. Money seemed unlimited, growth at all costs. A lot of fun. Servant-based leadership worked well. The presiding thinking was hire great people and get out of their way, which there's a lot of good in that. What I found over time was I would get further and further from the work and felt like I was becoming a

### 01:26 — Why servant leadership was already on the ropes

**[1:26]** less effective leader. And while I do think AI has killed servant-based leadership, I think it was already on the ropes. Once the 0% interest rate era ended, money started becoming a little harder to come by. And as you're mentioning, you know, a little bit more criticality around revenue per FTE and making sure, you know, the money that companies are spending are leading to outcomes that are good for the business. So it's hard for me to deny, you know, where we're at now where we need a lot more accountability. I believe that we've moved from, you know, what's the, what is it then if it's not servant-based leadership? I like to think of it as

### 02:12 — Active leadership: if you serve the AI, who are you serving?

**[2:12]** active leadership. Leaders need to be leading from the front. Leaders need to be embodying a belief that there's no job, no job too small, leaner teams, you know, the thing I think about with servant-based leadership as well to kind of wrap up the thought is if we're going to apply servant-based leadership in a world where AI is becoming more ingrained in the human AI collaboration and go to market and sales, AI doesn't have career aspirations. So if you're the servant to the AI and we have these agentic systems that are just built to do and accomplish and don't have emotions, who are we serving? It starts to kind of unravel when you start to

**[2:59]** really think about where we are right now and where we're going. Right, right. And I think AI is the biggest impact driver for the change of leadership that's necessary and I think you mentioned one of them. They don't have career aspirations so you don't need to waste your time wondering like what it needs to do. I even saw there was an article, Sam Altman was saying we are spending tens of millions of dollars because people are saying please and thank you and he said it's okay. It's an investment worth making it a more human experience but the reality is it's not necessary

**[3:39]** so you can just get pure execution out of a lot of the AI systems that are out there. But I think there's more implications. What else does introducing AI into the org change about how you're structuring your teams, who you're choosing to hire and then what leadership means in that new context? Yeah, great question. Kind of taking one step back just thinking about the conditions, kind of to tie it back to my last points about this passive era being over the zero percentage trade era. I think of Ben Horowitz's concepts. I think it was in the hard thing about hard things

### 04:20 — Peacetime vs. wartime companies

**[4:20]** is the concept of peacetime and wartime CEOs and I think you could take out CEO and just put in company right now because that 12-year era was really a peacetime era. There's a lot of stability, to call it predictable might be a little bit of an overuse of the word but the conditions were apparent. Whereas now I do truly think that we would fall into that category of wartime CEO or wartime company and it's aggressive language and we're working in business and people aren't necessarily dying but as we were discussing earlier it is important. Work is important,

**[4:57]** you care what we do, we have purpose. So in this wartime era really it's speed. So when I'm thinking about my teams, which I built, this will be the fourth team I've built in my career. Not really what I intentionally set out to do but you look at patterns over time. I built a team of my own agency, it was more of a digital design kind of e-commerce agency, then built a product design team at Lululemon for their e-commerce business, then moved to GitLab and built more of like a growth marketing team where we supported inbound marketing, the digital web experience and now here

**[5:41]** at Verify. And a lot of the principles have iterated and merged and what I've kind of learned is strategy and execution are so paired. You know strategy without execution is just us trying to sound smart. Execution without strategy, you're going to get some things done but what is it actually building up to? I like to think of a lot of what we do is important to have compound value. You know by doing one and one I want it to equal five not just two. So you have to have predictable results through that and how I'm thinking of that in this new AI era of team building is really

### 06:25 — AI-first teams and flattening the org

**[6:25]** having AI first teams and that comes down to change management. I ask everyone on my team like write a post-it note and put it on your main screen that says how can AI help me do what I'm just about to do. Like we have to retrain ourselves individually which is exciting because then we can start to flatten and simplify and make our team smaller. Everyone on my team right now if this was three years ago they'd be people leaders. What's really exciting and I'm finding this to be actually quite fulfilling as well is we get to do more of the work which is why we got into this in the first

**[7:04]** place and then you know you want to grow your career and the natural path is with most companies is towards people leadership which then means you're further away from the work and you get caught into that servant-based leadership funnel. So really being able to come back and do the work, work at high velocity and look at what rules can we break now based on this new paradigm. No absolutely and I think as organizations would grow because you had to you had to have people to execute a lot of the work that needed to be done to achieve your strategy. There's so much cost that

**[7:41]** comes in in these middle management layers, these VP layers, then executive layers to where the majority of your job becomes managing people, managing politics which I don't think anybody really enjoys. I think there's people who are good at it. I don't know if people like get up out of bed and are just so excited to you know dive into the politics of a large company. I'm sure there's one or two but we don't we don't have positive opinions of those people. Right exactly. A little like house of cards-esque type of people and I don't know if anybody should aspire for that but or it's like you're an athlete and you're playing the game and then you

**[8:17]** move into coaching but I agree with you. We have an opportunity to be in the game. We have an opportunity to be creative and really really own the work and I think that part's fun. I think you see it often you'd end up in like a VP level role and your whole job is just become talking with people and aligning things rather than creation and I do think it gives us an opportunity to hop back into that. I don't think it's a bad thing. No I don't disagree at all and like managing up and managing down and then managing around all of that as you kind of advance in your career ladder

**[8:53]** becomes more and more of the work and then that's where again just to sort of like go back to it where the servant-based leadership starts to make you the individual I believe come across as a little bit less credible over time because you're managing up you know you're trying to communicate we're doing this or this is what we've achieved and this is what's next if there's over time as you're getting further from the work if there's questions and usually if you're getting questions from above from the executive level they're good questions you're actually not in a position to

**[9:29]** answer them quickly or precisely and I've just sort of become extremely obsessed over the last couple weeks even on precision. I think with smaller teams and training AI tools to be contextually you know relevant to your unique business needs precision just is so important and this is at the VP level is again exciting to me like what is the shift the shift from then to now I have smaller teams the team that I do have that reports to me I do care deeply about their professional growth their job satisfaction their psychological safety but to me that falls more

### 10:13 — Precision and building your own custom GPTs

**[10:13]** under like situational coaching but because I have less or smaller teams fewer people I have this new space and what is that space what do I fill that space with you know that really as you advance in your career that becomes more and more of the question and what you're graded on in fact is what did you decide to work on and why and was it part of the critical 10% and what I've been thinking of lately related to precision is I'm building custom GPTs that has our company context trained into it so it's even more accurate I think I'm at the best level to train that GPT

**[10:54]** historically I probably would have pushed that into the organization and got someone else to do it but I believe that may lead to a lower level of precision because they don't have the amount of information I have or as quickly so it's it is exciting like it is exciting to to really sit there and think what does this mean for me now and how should I reprioritize or what do I value that's going to lead to the biggest force multiplication in my business I think he used a term that I really like used to get maybe a bad rap so the way you framed it being micro interested

### 11:33 — Micro-interested vs. micromanaging

**[11:33]** and I think people would tie that to micro managing which is you know somebody just on your case about little things all the time but I think that's very different than being micro interested and micro involved how do you see this tendency be something as a positive value in the new world that we're living in today well first I have to give credit to Ian McInnis who's the COO at rippling I came across that term in a podcast he did I think it was probably on first round and I'd been looking for that term or maybe I heard it and didn't know I was looking for it

**[12:13]** but when I heard it I was like thank you because no one likes a micromanager it appropriately has a negative connotation but the opposite you know there's no kind of middle it's like the way it's been framed anyway over the last 15 years is you are a micromanager or you are not you know it's kind of a binary right where this micro interested concept is the first I'd come across someone who was putting language to what's in between that gap and I've told my team too if if I'm spending more time with you and what you're working on based on the culture that we have which is

**[12:52]** performance-based making sure that our customer or prospects are feeling everything I might not think of that in terms of I like you more or your work is more interesting it probably means that I may have more concern around what you're working on so while we get more face-to-face time and that's great and I can help you develop in your career and I'm excited about what you're working on there is a bit of a level that I am focusing on this because I don't have complete confidence so that's how I kind of define micro interest with work that I have trust that's going

### 13:30 — Trust = consistency over time; coach your best performers

**[13:30]** on I probably was micro interested in the past and was able to come in and coaching correct and then we got to a level of trust you know trust to me the equation is consistency over time equals trust so we worked together I saw consistency over time and I saw trust then I looked over at another important initiative and I thought I'm gonna go and see again another term that I learned from Ian McKinnis which I liked was I'm gonna get close to that work and I'm going to increase my context so I can become a better leader or a better coach based on this situation

**[14:04]** so I think that micro interested is important because you know at a more senior level you can't be interested in everything all the time you only have so much time in the day but it's a nice way to kind of go about your org make sure that you have a decent amount of context and then gain trust and move back out of it and let people have that autonomy and I think it's just a nice teamwork dynamic like I have not had any negative feedback on it and I seek and encourage my teams to give me all feedback so today that's been good I'm you know I'm sure I'll get it wrong soon or have got

**[14:43]** it wrong and people just aren't being rude but I think it is important no I think it's important too and I think it comes with the intention so is your intention to be micro interested in order to point out faults and to show where somebody's doing something wrong versus am I micro interested because I really care about the work you're doing I really think I can partner with you on this and I think I can enhance your craft and skill in this area and I think it's really common we see it in other contexts if you have a music teacher if you have an athletic coach

**[15:21]** they tend to spend their time with their best performers not their worst the best performers get the most attention the best performers maybe get a little bit you know more critical feedback because the musician or the athlete knows that that person is just trying to make them the best that they can be and I think a lot of that gets lost in business because it has this negative connotation of oh I'm micro managing rather than like micro helping that person out yeah you know it's I've come across actually business leadership training too that you know it's now that you bring that up I'm like yeah I gotta remember that so again these conversations

**[16:03]** are so valuable for both of us is I've come across that training as well like it's usually the people who need the most help that leaders are focused on when in fact if you are a strength based organization you should be spending more time with your top performers but there's that human nature and human dynamic that you you want to leave no one behind so I think that's uh you know that's something I'm going to take away from this conversation to to reassess also how much more leverage can you get out of helping your top performer versus potentially wasting time with somebody who maybe they're just not a good fit for the role

**[16:48]** and so you're spending countless hours training and teaching and they're maybe just not in the right seat that's usually I think most people show up they want to do a good job and if they're not doing a good job usually it's because it's a poor fit so they should be doing something else so rather than trying to get like 10 percent more gain out of the productivity as somebody who shouldn't be in the role in the first place how can you 5x 10x the effectiveness of your top performer who is in the right role who's in flow in their sweet spot and develop them into

### 17:22 — Good to Great: the right people, and the right seats

**[17:22]** whatever they need to do to get to the next level too yeah I kind of think I've got some unique experience that I could add some some points to this uh where I start thinking of is Jim Collins book good to great um you know which any book over time like people can point out some flaws in it but I think the core message it's one of my favorites we actually at lean scale this this might be funny it's mandatory reading we have a couple we have a couple books if you join lean scale you got to get through at least read the spark notes um yeah and um and we use those as

**[17:57]** reference points when we're making decisions um when we're thinking about like who we're going to hire uh we point back to those frameworks quite often so anyway I'm a big fan of the book oh cool so yeah this will resonate then the I've always I think this will stand and will continue to stand his concept of um your business as a bus right like you get on the bus you look who's on the bus you assess some people need to get off the bus with those empty seats you think about who should be on the bus and once you have the right people on the bus you now can get to your destination

**[18:31]** and I think I'm thinking back of like when I joined Lululemon when I joined GitLab and in August uh of last year when I joined verify again a similar trend of companies I seem to join companies as a first character in upcoming chapters and I appreciate everyone from the previous chapter but I know my shape you know I think in in business I think of people in shapes and you need the right shapes my shape is not being super effective with minimal resources there are people who are amazing at getting stuff done and just figuring it out I can take a decent sized budget and have tremendous impact in a business I'm not great at taking no budget

### 19:26 — The 120-day people-decision window

**[19:26]** and making an impact um so that kind of early stage startup phase it's fun but it's not where I'm most effective and I find that I'm working a lot with making the transition to that next chapter for the business and that's where I go back to that Jim Collins point is I look around and it's kind of a shitty part of leadership making these people decisions but it's what you're paid for and one of my mentors said you have when you start a new job you have a hundred what do you say 120 days to make all your people decisions and changes and after 120 days the output is your your fault or your benefit so make those decisions early while you can

**[20:12]** making sure they're well thought out you know and fair but at a certain point you have no right to complain about your team because your job is to make your team so to your point I think that when you come into a company companies inherently have to grow have to become better it's what capitalism is and as an individual you should not believe that you deserve your job in one year if you have maintained a flat line because the company will have improved and now you will be below the line and if you want a promotion you actually have to improve over the next year at a

**[20:47]** more rapid pace than the business so over time when you join these companies there's there are people whose curve has been a little lower because the company's increased at a more rapid pace and you have to have that conversation with them and I found in my experience it sucks but then when I you know do a little bit of LinkedIn research or some I may have had relationships with and check in with them they're so relieved like I think we all know when we're doing a medium job yep let alone a bad job and I don't think we're naturally programmed at least in the places I've worked to be happy with being okay I don't think so either and I think it to

**[21:30]** your point you're not um this might sound terrible but you're usually doing them a favor because they they're not going to have a future and they could be an amazing fit somewhere else where they're going to feel valued they're going to be able to create a lot of value for where they are and it'll be a lot less stressful nobody likes to wake up every day feeling like they're doing a bad job so making sure you get you help them and I always think there's a very kind way to to do that too it doesn't have to be it's one it's not about them as a person it's just about hey these

**[22:05]** are the roles that we need in the company today um and then I always try to make as much effort as I can to be a good reference get them introduced to people we do this at lean scale I appreciate what other companies do too we bake in uh severance into our budget like knowing hey we're probably going to have to let go of x percent of people and when we do that we want to make sure we have budgeted enough to make it a smooth transition um you know rather than you know just kicking somebody out and then they don't have time to find their next move so one thing I wish they

### 22:43 — The vanishing junior-execution layer

**[22:43]** would have added in good to great and I think I've been um reflecting on this a lot is uh yes get the right people on the bus get them in the right seats but making sure you have the right seats on the bus like what are those actual jobs what are the seats that you've designed to fill people in with I think that might be one of the most difficult parts and I think that's changing really rapidly too and I'm curious your take on this with AI taking a lot of the execution level roles traditionally those would be filled by more junior resources they are filled by

**[23:23]** people who are just starting out in their career they're trying to figure out what direction they want to go and it feels like that whole layer is just being completely taken out and I feel really fortunate in a lot of ways I came up in my career I went to an office where I could build relationships with people I could find mentors who cared about my career and they would shepherd me along to the next role and there were jobs where it economically made sense for me to fill the role for the company and I could start to learn skills that are more valuable in future roles so in this new world where that layer just seems to be missing

**[24:01]** what do people do when they're just starting out yeah she just made me think of another point that I'll add on to that too for like people like you and I who are you know I don't think we're overly old so I'm going to say mid-career not late career that's nice that's nice for us I'm thinking of one individual who was on my team at GitLab and he was much younger than me and I just absolutely couldn't wait for our one-on-ones we do weekly one-on-ones and his relationship to work is so fundamentally different than my relationship to work neither is better and neither was worse I learned so much from him and just being around a different

**[24:48]** way to think about life work and I'm not going to say life work balance or integration just literally life and work so I think this I completely agree there's like an evaporation of this junior level of employee going on right now and I had never really thought about the effect to people like you and I you know it it almost bakes in tendency and hardens a resistance to change which is terrible but to your point about where do people start it's a tough one like I initially I'm very entrepreneurial by nature so what I get really excited about is things like

### 25:27 — Replit, Cursor, Lovable, and building taste

**[25:27]** replit um cursor all of these all of these things that are actually allow you to go from idea to product so fast and knowing you know through the individualized just mentioning at GitLab knowing how confident most of those people are how capable they are coming out of these programs that have formalized things that you know we kind of made up as we were going along and seeing companies there's a bunch of these companies like lovable and etc that have gone from like zero to 10 million dollars in 30 days um maybe thinking hyper aggressive and saying well maybe I don't

**[26:10]** work for someone maybe I make all the mistakes in public but I build something could be an option things that I would think about developing that will never go I believe will never go out of style or will never not be valued and it's a really nebulous term but taste

**[26:30]** AI doesn't have taste AI takes prompts AI shows you a thing and then you have to determine if that's good or not so taste I think a lot of it you're probably born with or sort of exposed to through your life experience but I do think it could be and can be developed by looking at beautiful things using well-designed products experiencing you know high level of experiences to kind of start to develop that so that when you are saying something is good there's a nuance and a sophistication to it is is a differentiator but yeah it's it's a really tough question I I don't

**[27:16]** have very good answers but it's something that's real I think needs to be addressed what are you what are your thoughts Anthony no you have me thinking too because I did I think I framed the question and I framed the problem as a problem for the younger generation um but yeah it's a problem for us because culture and the definition of what is cool is defined by the younger generation like it's not us anymore like I I have three kids now I'm not cool and I don't know what cool looks like so I tend to make sure I have you know people who are plugged in and get their perspective on things we may have a lower expectation of what a UI or user experience

**[28:05]** should be just because we're used to so much worse like hey this is probably good enough whereas somebody who's you know 18 to 22 they're like this looks like a dinosaur made your software yeah um and having that taste I think it gets harder um as you've been hardened as you grow through your career so I'm thinking you're having me think how do we also stay in touch and find ways to get plugged into different generations um without like just completely destroying that layer for ourselves too and staying connected how do we how do we ensure that virtuous cycle is still baked in yeah I don't know because before you would have okay

### 28:52 — The agency opportunity and the new lean startup

**[28:52]** we have these roles economically it makes sense and by the way we get to stay plugged in I think I think we'll have to find a way to incorporate bringing in junior roles and staying connected across a few generations um and we'll have to make it make economic sense yeah to the economic sense point like where where my mind was going is um I think of my one of the projects I was working on at Lulu lemon we were working with a great uh agency called meta lab and I was leading the internal team and I was also the lead on the project that they were working on and you know

**[29:28]** it's it's when two things are put together that the differences really start to shine you know it's thinking of that um uh frog in a pot of water that's about to boil you know stay in there till it's cooked but if you throw one in it'll jump out um you know we were doing a lot of internal work and the internal work was complicated a little ambiguous ambiguous and we had a few other projects come up that we had to get done on the same timeline so of course we're going to outsource those in our decision making it was like well it makes the most sense and it's the

**[30:03]** lowest risk to outsource the most thought through projects and I had this visual in my head that started to develop where when we were working with the external agency we had a nicely wrapped present it had a bow on it and we'd hand it to them they would take the present they open the bow and they'd say oh wow let's solve this problem they put it back in and hand it over lovely process meanwhile internally with my team I'd be like okay here's a plate of spaghetti we gotta figure this out forgot to mention the noodles are snakes and I need the plate back and they're standing there

**[30:39]** like trying to figure out how to solve this thing yeah so thinking about that I do think there's still space as you were kind of leading towards with juniors at um agencies because these problems are a little bit more well defined it becomes not to the point of being economically viable if you bring in junior people naturally and you know having run an agency and having a pay model based on um seniority the agency is actually more cost effective if you can achieve stuff with more junior talent so I think looking there is like I might give that recommendation it's kind of where I started in more of like digital advertising agency and I did that

**[31:27]** intentionally because it allowed me to work on Starbucks and Nike um craft dinner project of all things you know comes to mind um and get those logos associated with my career which then I was able to leverage to move in-house or when I was doing my own thing gaining trust of potential clients where they'd say well we just work on a coca-cola project like we should probably trust them little did they know I you know was not really doing much of importance I was reformatting banner ads or something like that but you know you need to kind of build that perception of yourself

### 32:08 — Know the neighborhood; career market fit

**[32:08]** in your career and then that enables you to go where you're going and I've always at the start of my career I kind of made the decision that I don't exactly know my destination but I kind of know the neighborhood of where I want to go to and as long as the avenues that open up ahead of me are leading in that relative direction I'm going to take that opportunity I'm not going to sit as a barista at my local coffee shop waiting for the straight line to where I'm going to go it's really about what do I know what do I know I can do with what I know and what opportunities

**[32:49]** ahead of me are allowing me to apply my interest in my skill and having just changed jobs recently um you know I did a lot of thinking on like what is that next move and we talk a lot about product market fit obviously you know in what we do and this concept of career market fit kind of bubbled up to me like as someone who I lead marketing you know I lead go to market I don't necessarily think of myself as a marketer from being super transparent but the market thinks of me as a marketer and there's career market fit I had so many opportunities in the marketing realm

**[33:31]** and I just felt like this would be silly for me not to continue along this path like I do know I'm good at this and I know that I get some enjoyment I don't really care what you call me you call me the janitor as long as I'm working on stuff that has purpose and I'm able to do work I like I just don't get hung up on it so I guess just follow opportunity and try and make your path is the guidance I would give junior people yeah and I also think when you're along that avenue going towards the neighborhood you think you want to go to as you're looking out the window you start to see other neighborhoods that look really nice too and you know I think

**[34:07]** most of us probably didn't have these linear careers there's only probably a handful of professions where you have to go through it that way and as you're doing something I think as long as whatever place you're in giving it your all doing a really good job it's going to create more opportunities and then you're going to discover things that you didn't even know existed that you didn't even know you'd be passionate about and then find ways to just keep following that journey and I think it's more fun that way too like not knowing the exact destination makes it a little

### 34:37 — Munger: focus on the work on your desk

**[34:37]** exciting as you're going along the way and I think uh just to jump in like just reminded me of one of my I love quotes uh from smart people uh one of my favorite quotes is from Charlie Munger who has passed a couple years ago but was Warren Buffett's partner at Virtua Hathaway and he's this is when I when I was running my own business I came across this so it really was very meaningful he said the best way to get new work is to focus on the work that's on your desk and I was like that is like these these phrases these phrases with few words but so much meaning I just can't wait or hope and

**[35:12]** dream that I can get to a point to that level of communication and wisdom that resonates with me a lot because if you don't do the work that's in front of you that's meaningful in the time you're not going to build the trust with the people that will create it no it makes a ton of sense and I think tying it back to what should somebody do starting out early in their career I do think the agency type of model I don't think it's actually fully taken shape yet and I don't think we've experienced all the market and external conditions that are pushing a lot of tailwind there we're

**[35:50]** talking a lot at lean scale about the new lean startup so everything that you know the loveables and the cursors those companies that are going from 0 to 10 million in 30 days they're not doing it with a lot of people but they do need partners yeah and they're going to outsource I love that like here's a present I as you were saying that I was thinking was like puzzles like there's probably 10 000 puzzles over here and it's the company's job to figure out which puzzles need to be solved and which are the most important ones but then you could take the puzzle box and have

**[36:28]** somebody go build it and I do think that's a good opportunity for somebody just starting out they can be given the skills to find problems and then just make sure that they can execute against it and then it will give them exposure to different problems and then they can hop into industry later but with remote work I know this is old news for a lot of people but I would not have been able to start lean scale if I wasn't a remote worker right it just would not have been possible there I there would have been such a barrier for me to do this even you know hopefully my

**[37:09]** previous employers aren't listening to this but doing work on the side during work hours like if I was sitting in an office I would not have been able to do that and I think there are going to be a lot more people taking the leap and it's easier to build teams of specialized resources when you're in a remote world so I think agencies are going to grow they're going to pop up all over the place and more and more people will do it and it's going to be a bigger percentage of the workforce where I think we can funnel in those people early in their career or they can get

**[37:42]** started and in some path and find their find their neighborhood along the way yeah I I completely agree and I think uh you know if I had any advice for agencies having been on both sides of it um like I've been internal for a while now and I'm just talking through another I've got a few agencies I'm working with and every time they show me a price to achieve something I want to do my first thought is oh I can get that done and and all these other things done in the same amount of time by just paying a little bit more money now we're in a fortunate position where we're

**[38:20]** in some pretty rapid growth and have healthy funding um which is the conditions I look for you know healthy funding uh cult like kind of followings um I've kind of had the privilege of having those benefits but if an agency can really focus on positioning we're going to partner with you we can take on that project maybe try and get an understanding of what else the company's working on and then you can say this is awesome you guys are doing a b and c and we can do d in that way you're getting four things done on the on my side of the house I'm like oh yeah four things is better

**[38:58]** than three things let's find the budget for this yeah and and to know you just have an easy button to press go yeah rather than oh am I gonna hire someone and train them they got a ramp they have to give notice to their current company they have to go build a team it's gonna be like six to nine months before anything productive is really happening um no they have to be able to to do that and I think previously I think a lot of agencies were very solution focused meaning they would create a solution for a very specific problem and see who has all those problems

**[39:35]** I think we have an opportunity to have agencies be very customer focused its lean skills approach a little bit get very specific about what customer you want to help and then solve as many problems as possible for that specific customer and keep stacking on different things that you can lean in and help with I totally agree that's like the compounding nature of that I was talking about earlier when you're putting in any effort or energy if you can focus on it compounding in value over time of course you're going to do that right and then you have a chance to build the trust

### 40:10 — Frameworks to implement: OKRs, sprints, monthly ship

**[40:10]** get integrated with the team it's going to be much easier to bring in another solution then try to build trust with a whole new company that you've never worked with before something I think it's always good out of these conversations is just to get a little bit tactical a little bit practical you know things people can walk away with today and start implementing are there any frameworks or processes or things that you've implemented that you feel kind of help guide this new organization structure new leadership structure that people can start using yeah I think just just to kind of recap a couple of the points we've covered like

**[40:52]** as a leader lead from the front you know show the way by doing the work I like maybe it's just you know my my upbringing but I just have this attitude that no job is too small you know if we're at a huge event and I'm you know the people who are on my team are set up and responsible for it and I walk by an empty coffee cup on a table I'm going to throw that coffee cup away I have a a belief or a phrase I like to say share with my team is speed kills and what I mean by that is speed kills your competition if you're moving faster than them lack of speed kills your company

### 41:31 — "The snow melts first from the edges"

**[41:31]** so kind of building on that like how do we how do we get to that speed there's a book called uh seeing around corners I can't remember the author but she's fantastic and she had the most poetic strategy phrase I've ever come across and it's just stuck with me for years the snow melts first from the edges and what she meant by that is those that are the closest to the work probably are going to make the best fastest decisions and the further away you get from it again still throwing shade on servant-based leadership uh I know it's well into the the discussion but just keep piling it on the further you get away from it you know the more firm and

**[42:12]** cold the snow is so I really try and focus on that transparency and how can I establish frameworks that allow people on my team or teams of teams to have autonomy and information that allows them to make decisions quickly that I think will be actually accurate so three frameworks that I'm finding are hyper effective is first focusing on quarterly okr so objectives and key results set your plan you've got three months in a quarter two weeks before that quarter you should have a list of aligned priorities that you want to get done that quarter and that list will probably be

**[42:55]** too long there's too much work in there and then you have to draw the line and say okay we can get everything above the line we can get done everything below the line we don't think we can get done based on the capacity we have on our team that leads to a very rich conversation with the people who have work items below the line where you're not the one who has to say we're not doing this you can say okay we think that project x is of a higher priority and this person is leading it your project is below the line based on our assessment why don't you go talk to them

**[43:33]** and talk about maybe flipping that because I'm how all I want to do is work on the most important work so if you want to jockey for that position you have the conversation then let's have a conversation about reprioritizing this list and then you want to bake that in and the whole reason I say I do this is to enable me to say no with kindness because within that quarter someone's going to set their hair on fire and say this thing's the biggest thing we got to do it tomorrow and you I can say okay understood but we have these things on the go is it more of a priority

**[44:10]** than these and most of the time you'll say actually no it's not but you also want to build slack time into your plan and I don't mean slack time is in the app just literal slack in the process so that if something does come up say it's from the ceo which happens all the time you can say yes to it and bring it in and you have both consistent velocity predictable velocity and results and then you also establish a perception or a reputation that when important things come up you can execute them on yep so then going one level deeper how do you how do you actually

**[44:47]** execute and consistently deliver on that quarterly plan and you know leading go-to-market which is both sales and marketing at verify I truly believe there's creativity in sales and I know there's creativity in marketing and I know that creativity with a deadline means nothing ever gets done or doesn't ship I'm always hyper sensitive especially in the marketing side that we create this tower of marketing excellence that no prospect or customer ever feels so how do we kind of lower that and make sure we're constantly shipping is a two-week sprint cycle again I did 10 years of front-end engineering so you know it's kind of baked into me that way of

**[45:32]** thinking but I kind of have just like a really simplified agile process that kind of merged with Kanban so to do doing done process we have minimal meetings you know at the start of the sprint which is two weeks we'll meet on Monday as a team we say okay in the next two weeks by next Thursday we're gonna achieve I'm gonna achieve these things and we align like if that makes sense I get it that's cool do you need me for anything do I need you for anything okay let's bake this plan in we check in on that Friday saying yeah I'm pretty confident I'm gonna achieve what I agreed to or

**[46:08]** oh I've hit a couple roadblocks I'm gonna readjust my commitments because surprises and missing your commitments is way worse than being honest and reducing them and then the following Thursday we do two meetings we do a sprint review so we get to share and show what we had accomplished and to me this is the pinnacle of teams I want to lead and be on I want to be sitting in a meeting and seeing someone I work with on my team present something and make me feel in my bones that is awesome I need to make something that awesome and then the next sprint I want to be the person that

**[46:45]** inspires the rest of the team and then we follow that with a sprint retro very simple what went well what could have gone better what are we going to do about it and then the following Friday it's a little bit of an old school idea but I just say that is 20 percent time you know work on something that you think is important that maybe it's aligned maybe it's totally random I don't know you're smart you're closest to the work you're the snow that's melting first work on something awesome if I find two or three sprints a row you're just getting caught up on your sprint I'm

**[47:21]** gonna be a little annoyed maybe we should just reduce what you're committing to because I need that special time like I need you to do and apply your gift because something's going to come out of it that's going to be amazing and then the last thing I'd share in terms of framework is monthly meetings for the entire company so we have a monthly we started as a monthly marketing all hands but it'll expand into a sales all hands and it's really just to share with the organization what have we shipped since last month and this is how I put the urgency and responsibility on my

**[47:57]** team to ship stuff don't just make it internally make sure it's shipping we have this public forum with the entire company everyone from the ceo down joins you want to make sure that you are sharing something that you shipped that's going to be really good for your visibility and your career growth so I think starting with that quarterly okay ours to the two-week breakdown to the monthly sort of proof points it's been working really well I've done it at GitLab previously and I've implemented it here and I I like it I can see a lot of visibility and progress I think it makes

### 48:32 — Precision, accountability, and wartime

**[48:32]** a ton of sense I agree with everything you said just giving a big plus one and and one one thing to add you know it's for so I sit in founder ceo position and we also we do the monthly meetings we also have a quarterly off-site so normally it's like hey let's check in on our okay ours let's check in on our strategy and make sure it's still a good fit where we want the company to go and I don't want to show up to that meeting without something to share with the company it's pressure on me to build as well and it's not for career advancement necessarily it's just to

**[49:15]** you know human nature like I want to accountability yeah I accountability and I want to show up for my team and I want to I want to make sure that it's it's worthwhile and make sure you know we have a vision that's worth following and we have a mission that's worth going on why are people working some nights and weekends and why are people pushing in extra effort hey because what we're doing is worth it and having that quarterly off-site forum puts the pressure on me to make sure that we keep that mission and vision crystal clear and I have a audience and a forum to go deliver

**[49:51]** that so which brings us back to that point about precision like this is I'm getting hyper hyper obsessed with just precision you know words have power words like phrases have power and the more precise we are as force multipliers the more effective your organization as a whole is going to be absolutely and it and it's hard it's harder to make things you know more concise make them shorter um it's an art something personally working if you wanted a shorter letter you should have gave me more time that's right that's exactly it but I think these frameworks really

**[50:33]** help new age of company building it is more it it is wartime in in a business context this is not you know there was a nice fundraise grow multiples on sass companies were great acquisitions were not imminent but more likely to happen now you have things that have completely commoditized a lot of tech there's so much effort to put in bc money is not flowing around like it used to so only the really really effective productive companies are going to survive and make it to that next level let alone be great yeah and profitable like that's that was the biggest shift was so many non-profitable companies getting acquired or going public at

**[51:21]** massive multiples and then overnight it was like no that's never gonna happen okay that's right it's not allowed anymore michael this has been awesome i've i've learned so much i know um people listening are going to walk away with just so much rich actionable frameworks and perspectives um before we wrap up i'd i'd love to hear you know you've had such an interesting career working at big brands lululemon gitlab so many interesting roles starting as an engineer um what are you working on now what's exciting about the work you're doing now and um also maybe how can people get in touch with you too awesome yeah um so yeah i'm

### 51:52 — What Michael's building at VRIFY: DORA

**[52:08]** with verify joined them in um august and i was really looking for verticalized ai in a niche industry it just made sense to me it made sense that that's where where i should be you know i don't want to be the you know the cliche phrase is i don't want to be raising faster horses at the turn of the 19th century in detroit you know ford's gonna eat my lunch um so at verify i lead go to market you know i've brought on got brought on to build the marketing org and now you know i've kind of planted my flag to let everyone know that marketing without sales is just promotion

**[52:47]** and that's not really what i love doing i love growing businesses um so we're we're gonna build an abm sales motion account-based marketing because we have a fixed ham and it's more of a spear fishing model than than net fishing um we recently released to the public dora which is our ai-assisted mineral discovery platform and it puts the power of ai into the hands of geoscientists we're in love with it it's becoming incredibly effective it redefines how mineral discoveries are made there's just facts in the world that'll kind of blow your mind like less than one percent

**[53:24]** of mineral exploration projects find anything economically viable meanwhile we have like precious metals minerals um commodities you know gold for example at all-time highs the company's looking for these valuations are at all-time lows so there's some lack of trust in capital markets in these companies ability to define them and that's what our ai tool does it goes through existing data the companies already has looks for correlation based on previous discoveries on properties you already own the rights to and finds the conditions okay did you find gold here and you know it because you drilled it and you you brought it out

**[54:06]** all of the magnetic surveys all of the minerals that are in and around it just happened to be 1300 uh feet to the north i bet you you're going to find something similar on property you already own um so it's it's fascinating uh you know very relevant in the world that we're living in now so yeah i'm really really enjoying what we're doing here we're experiencing a lot of a lot of growth and i feel like we're right around the corner from just hyper hyper growth because we've got a lot of our the thing here is these drill programs take time sure drills are massive they

### 54:46 — Where to connect and close

**[54:46]** pull out their cores they need to be assayed we've got a lot of results about to be um released and our clients are smiling quite big which we like uh so i think we'll we're right around the corner from a lot of inflow and yeah it's great so yeah your question about where you can connect with me um i'm a linkedin user i think find me on linkedin uh always happy to connect i'm not one of these people it's like i don't know you're not going to connect um networks lose connections become incredibly valuable and always have time for people i love it i love it well thank you so

**[55:20]** much for spending so much time today and um and being on the podcast uh like i said i learned so much i know everybody listening will too and um wishing you the best of luck i think you've had such an amazing career this sounds like a really exciting opportunity and um i hope this isn't the last time i'm sure there's going to be as things develop there's going to be more to unpack and and dive deeper on yeah thanks for having me i think this has been awesome awesome thank you michael thank you


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