Superpowers Don't Scale Themselves

Spring has Sprung 15 × 18 Wood Panel

AI will amplify whatever you already do. If you don't know what that is, you're about to automate the wrong thing.

3 minute read

There's a specific kind of leader who gets the most obvious value out of AI right now: someone who already knows exactly what they're good at, and uses the tool to do more of it, faster. There's another kind of leader who gets almost nothing out of the same tools, despite using them just as often. The difference isn't skill with the technology. It's self-knowledge.

Your Superpower is the thing you do that other people find remarkable and you find ordinary. It's usually invisible to you precisely because it's effortless, which means most leaders have never actually named it. Ask them to describe their job, and they'll talk for ten minutes. Ask what makes them exceptional at it, and most stall out after a sentence.

Good at it isn't the same as loving it

Here's the trap most senior leaders fall into before they even get to AI: they're smart enough to get genuinely good at almost anything they set their mind to. That's not a compliment, it's a warning. Competence is not the same signal as Superpower. Career satisfaction, tracked over years rather than any single day, comes down to how much of your work draws on what you actually enjoy, not just what you've proven you can handle. A real Superpower has to clear two bars, not one: you're genuinely excellent at it, and it's something you'd choose to keep doing even if no one needed you to.

That distinction matters more once AI enters the picture, not less. AI will scale a skill you're good at but privately dread just as fast as one that energizes you. It has no way of telling the difference. Neither will you, unless you've already done the work of separating what you're capable of from what you actually want more of.

Why that gap matters more with AI, not less

AI doesn't discriminate between your best instincts and your worst habits. It scales both with equal enthusiasm. I worked with a leader whose real strength was connecting with people fast, genuinely, in a way that made people trust her within minutes of meeting her. Once she could name that clearly, she used AI to prep for ten times as many of those conversations, more context on each person, sharper questions ready before she walked in, and the strength compounded. A leader who hasn't done that naming work will use the exact same tool to generate more of whatever they happen to already be doing, good, mediocre, or actively unhelpful, with no filter for which is which.

AI is not a strategy. It's a multiplier. Multiplying the wrong thing just gets you more of it, faster.

What to do instead

Before asking AI to help you do more, ask a narrower question: more of what, exactly? What's the thing you do that consistently gets results other people can't quite replicate? If you can name it in one sentence, you're ready to use AI as leverage. If you can't, that's the actual next step, not a better prompt, but a clearer answer to what you're trying to amplify in the first place.

Technical fluency is catching up fast. Everyone will have it soon enough. What won't catch up on its own is knowing, specifically, what's actually yours to scale. That part still takes real work, and no tool does it for you.