Why are so many leaders impressed by generative AI?
Because it mirrors their own way of thinking.
An LLM operates on a "fuzzy recollection" of its training data. It can talk convincingly about almost anything, but it lacks deep, grounded knowledge until you provide it with specific, clarifying context.
Similarly, a leader who only operates at a high level develops a "fuzzy mindset." They can sell a vision using all the right buzzwords, but they lack the hands-on context of what it actually takes to build it. This gap between the vision and the reality is where strategies fail, teams burn out, and products falter.
Familiarity vs. Knowledge
In engineering, there's a huge difference between familiarity and true knowledge. This is the core of the fuzzy mindset.
- Familiarity is knowing the buzzwords and high-level concepts. It's the ability to talk about "microservices," "event-driven architecture," or "AI transformation" in a meeting.
- Knowledge is having built it yourself. It's understanding the nuances, the trade-offs, and the compounding "little things" that never show up on a slide deck but are critical to building a real-world system.
Familiarity allows you to sell the "what." Knowledge is required to deliver the "how" and, more importantly, to understand the "why."
The Cure: Be Visionary, But Stay Grounded
If this is sounding like you, it's time to get grounded. This isn't about becoming a full-time coder; it's about developing an authentic understanding of your own business operations to replace inauthentic authority with understanding integrity.
- Talk to the builders. Have regular, open conversations with your engineers. Don't ask for status updates; ask them what the hardest part of their job is right now. Ask them what they're most worried about in the codebase.
- Understand the current challenges. Go beyond the executive summary. Read the post-mortems from the last outage. Sit in on a sprint planning session. Understand the real-world friction your team faces every day.
- Attempt a side project from scratch. The fastest way to appreciate the complexity of modern development is to experience it. Try to build a simple web app and deploy it. The "little things" you encounter will be a masterclass in the challenges your team solves at scale.
This increasingly rare attribute—a leader who is both visionary and grounded—is what separates the best from the rest. It results in better deals, because investors can spot the difference. It leads to smoother operations, because there is less friction between your vision and the engineering reality. And it reduces team burnout, because your expectations are finally rooted in the real world.