CRIT™: Harnessing Abraham Lincoln to Write Your AI Manifesto

(upbeat music) Welcome to the Ad Driven Leader, the podcast dedicated to helping you as a leader, harness AI to build better leaders, better businesses and better lives. I'm your host, Jeff Woods. In this crit episode, you are going to hear me turn the tables on Jeff Gilmore. He is the president, CEO and director of Worthington Steel, a steel manufacturing company here in the US. They have about 6,000 employees. In our last episode together, you got to hear how Jeff went from super skeptical about using AI to setting a standard that we are going to be an AI driven organization and setting the expectation that 6,000 people are going to use it. Today, we turned the tables and I asked him out of all the challenges you're facing in your business. What are the biggest problems you've got right now that if we could solve them, it would unlock a new level of growth. Jeff so firmly believes that AI creates an opportunity to unlock a huge level of growth, but he's experiencing the same challenges that a lot of us are experiencing. How do you win the hearts and minds of a workforce, especially in his size with 6,000 people? When some are optimistic, but some are skeptical and some are downright fearful. And Jeff knows that at this point, there's no point in thinking this through on your own. Harness AI is a thought partner. That is the purpose of today's crit episode. You're going to get to watch me or listen to me, pull up AI and actually apply our crit methodology which stands for context, role, interview, task. To turn into a thought partner for Jeff, to interview him by asking one question at a time, to ultimately help him lay out a full-blown roadmap on how to drive AI adoption inside his company. But then you're going to watch us invoke the challenger where we're going to ask AI to stress test the sufficiency of his plane. And it's going to fight all the cracks and weaknesses. And one of the things it's going to call out is that telling people that they need to do this doesn't truly handle their underlying objections. And what he actually needs isn't manifesto. What ended up happening after this was truly extraordinary because Jeff said to me, all right, later I'm going to call an Abraham Lincoln because he's on my AI board and I want to see how he would talk this through. And I say, let's do it right now. And we literally ask AI to adopt the persona of Abraham Lincoln to help give him feedback on where his plan is strong, where it's weak. And the top changes we have to make so that this could become a rallying cry for the organization that would move them into action. I truly had coup-sponsed by the time we were done with this use case. And I'm so glad that we pressed record and now that we get to share it with you. With that, let's get into this great episode with Jeff. Come on. (upbeat music) Let's turn the tables and let's do a use case. All right. So what is a challenge or an opportunity you're facing that if we could focus on it and move the ball on it, it would actually make a material impact for you. And I'm going to use what we've been talking about. - Is this a 20% priority that will drive 80% of the results? - It is, 100%. - Cool. I always check this just because why would we waste our time focusing on something that's not 100%. (laughing) - 100%. - So here, let me get open my, all right. So, and you want me to use my AI board for this, right? - Yes, I do. - Okay, cool. All right, so for people who are watching this, this is my actual AI board. For those of you who are listening to this, I am showing my AI board. All right, perfect. So first thing I'm doing is I'm putting in context role, interview and task, just typing it in as a structure. And now we're going to fill in the gaps real quick. I'm doing this use case for Wording 10 Steel, I'll talk in first person, but don't save to memory because it's not me. And the reason I have to do this, Jeff, is 'cause I asked my board for my weaknesses as a CEO, and it told me for a guy who built a company on one thing. In the past, I wonder why you have 50 companies? So, now it knows. - All right. - All right, so just start talking and I'll start typing. All right, so our company is early on in our artificial intelligence journey. We are embracing large language models and we have a longer term goal of moving to large reasoning models and agentic artificial intelligence and eventually into large action models. This is a major change management program for the company. As the CEO, I am leading and pushing this agenda aggressively. We have a new senior leader and charge of the initiatives, Steve Bartos, we are identifying super users. We are rolling out education. What am I missing? That's my question is, what am I missing? Okay. Can you expand on that when you say, "What am I missing?" I feel that I have all the steps covered. And when I talk about, "What am I missing?" An example could be, "Is the process not methodical enough? Is being aggressive, the same is moving too fast? Does pace matter?" - Cool, that's great. Now, I'm just looking at the context. The key here is, you said this is, did we say this is a major transformation? - Yes. - We're embracing LLAM's long-term goals in moving to reasonable models. Okay, so that's, I'm gonna put stars in it around that. - So it might add to that. - It's gonna change workflows. It's gonna change responsibilities. - All right, great. Roll, what role do you want my board to play? A professional change management consultant. - Get more descriptive. I can vision how they think, how they act. Just go more vivid. - Think creatively, specifically think with empathy on the impact of the employees. Think entrepreneurial on how this could also grow the business. And am I missing the potential for revenue opportunities? - Okay, great. Now, interview me, ask me one question at a time, up to three questions to gain deeper context, task, what do you want it to do? I want you to come back with a list of five things prioritized with the most important being one, the least important five, or recommendations, we could say, of what you think I could be missing, what I could possibly be doing more of, or should consider even eliminating. - So when I hear the task, I naturally want to go back up just to reread to make sure any other context we want to give it, 'cause again, we're laying the foundation here. So context, I'm doing this use case forwarding to steal, talking first person, but don't save the memory 'cause it's not me. Our company is early on in our AI journey. We're embracing LLM's when we have a long-term goal of moving to large-reasing models and agent AI and eventually into large action models. It's going to change workflows, responsibility, et cetera. As a CEO, I'm leading and pushing this agenda aggressively. We have a new senior leader in charge of the initiative, Steve Bartos, and our identifying super users. We are rolling out of education and I find myself wondering, what am I missing? Here's what I mean. I feel like we have all the steps covered. And when I talk about what I am I missing, an example could be, is the process not methodical enough? Is being aggressive the same as moving too fast? Does pace matter? Role. Your role is to act as a professional change management consultant. Think creatively, specifically think with empathy on the impact of the employees. Think entrepreneurily on how this could also grow the business. Am I missing the potential for revenue opportunities? Interview me. Ask me one question at a time. Up to three questions to gain deeper context. Then your task is to come back with a list of five things prioritized with the most important thing being one and least being five of what you think I could be missing, what I could be doing more of and should even consider eliminating. Anything you would add for additional color. You know, for additional color, where did we talk about, hey, we're educating and let's include launching pilots as well as launching pilots and publishing our wins and failures proudly? Because the ultimate-- I think the thing we haven't said here is you're saying you're embracing AI. But we haven't said why. Yeah. Here's why we are embracing AI. Why? We want to think much more strategically. We want our employees spending 80% of their time on the 20% of their job that has the best opportunity to create shareholder value. Additionally, we want to improve work-life balance, provide our employees with new technology and tools that are exciting. And we want our employees to be motivated to all think like entrepreneurs. Good, good. All right, let's see what happens. I actually love that it skipped the interview and went straight to the answers, because this is a perfect example of AI hallucinating. It's not asking them one at a time. So it's asking all five. You didn't follow my instructions. I said to ask one at a time. Let's go. And I think this is-- I'm thrilled that this happened because people, when, not if, when AI hallucinates, when it does not follow your instructions, some people freak out, and it's like, you're in the driver's seat. You're the fall leader. Just tell it what to do. Right. There we go. All right, you mentioned this is a major change management program. How would you describe the emotional state of the average employee right now? Are they curious, excited, skeptical, overwhelmed, fearful, or something else? So I think we have a critical mass that is both curious and excited. But I want to be very mindful of the employees that may feel fearful or overwhelmed or skeptical. Let's see what it says. That's a strong foundation. Curiosity and excitement creates lift, but skepticism and fear creates drag, which brings us to the second question. How are you currently surfacing the unspoken concerns, especially from those who aren't raising their hands? Are there safe, anonymous, or structured channels to hear from the quietly resistant middle? Oh, what a good question. Yeah, a good question. And so I personally and other managers are not trying to jump. I should say, we are communicating and messaging that there's nothing to be fearful of. We are not looking to replace jobs. We want to use artificial intelligence to augment their jobs and to make them better and focused on more strategic initiatives in their role and for the company. We are trying to provide frequently asked questions and responses that we would post to an internal website. I would say, though, we have fallen short of a specific plan to address those types of concerns. Boom. That's honest and helpful. Thank you. Messaging isn't necessary, but not sufficient. So by the way, the reason it's starting to talk this way is because it's my board. So I have tuned my board on a very specific persona to try CEOs and not pull punches. So it's not just going to fluff you up like an average, large language model will. It's going to start calling you out. That's what I prefer. You're a CEO. Messaging is necessary, but not sufficient. A proactive listening system is just as critical. We'll come back to that. Third and final question, beyond productivity gains, are you currently exploring new revenue opportunities for AI, such as new business models, commercial offerings, or industry-wide solutions, Worthington could build or lead with? Or has this focused mostly been on the internal transformation? So to date, the focus has been far more weighted towards our internal transformation. We have formed an internal team, which is called our Big Bet team. It's a group of highly intelligent, high-performing individuals that are now responsible for exploring opportunities to leverage AI with existing and potential core competencies at Worthington Steel to pursue additional shareholder value. Good. In fact, I just invited the individuals to join. They'll report directly to me. And we don't kick off until next week. So I invited them to join and kick off suite. That's a great idea, by the way. All right, that's a great move. The Big Bet team has huge potential if they're framed as entrepreneurs, not analysts. I'll factor that in. Top five things you might be missing or could amplify. Prioritized for strategic impact, cultural resilience, and growth upside. Number one, establish a psychological safety net for the quiet middle. Why, without active listening, least fear in the shadows, what to add, launch structured safe space listening, anonymous AI-enabled surveys, voice of the middle forums, skip-level feedback loops, encourage honest feedback without consequences. Without this, silent resistance festers and the high-performance burns out, trying to drag the reluctance. Love it, fantastic. Yep. And one of my things even listening to you was if they're resistant, you from the top and the management from the top saying there's nothing to fear, there's nothing to fear, doesn't actually validate their concerns and help move them through. It almost ignores it. That good point. There is a play here with AI, by the way. And this is what I have seen. You experienced it when we did it with you, when we gave everybody the prompt, and then we layered the aggregate on top. It's not the most dominant voice that's heard. Every voice gets heard. I think there's an opportunity there if you look at AI, like how might you architect the prompt where it's not a type-form survey. It's an actual AI prompt that interviews them about their feedback, and it can be anonymous. But then it actually unlocks the true sentiment of what they're feeling and why, 'cause AI can, you can architect the prompt, so AI will interview them to dive deeper. Yeah, at that point. And based on that, you can aggregate all that data and then be able to layer that into your planning. That sounds a lot faster than survey monkey. Yeah. (laughing) Yeah. All right, two, codify an AI change narrative that gets repeated weekly. Why? The average employee hears a message seven times before it sticks. What to do? Build a three-minute AI narrative. All leaders can repeat. Tying AI to personal career growth, purpose, and Worthington's strategic advantage. Layer and job-level examples of, here's what this looks like in your role. Without this, curiosity turns into confusion. Excitement turns into disengagement. Very good. Number three, define clear success gates for each phase of the journey. Why? Aggressive can become chaotic without clarity. What to define? What does success look like for each phase? Education, super user momentum, workflow redesign, business model exploration, uses as green lights to accelerate. Without this, pacing is reactive and progress feels arbitrary. Number four, elevate your big bet team into a startup studio mindset. Ooh. Why? This gold isn't in finding an idea. It's in running real experiments with market pull. What to consider? Give this team a mandate to co-create with customers. Explore AI-powered services Worthington could sell, not just use. Consider quarterly demos to the board. Without this, it stays a brainstorming group instead of a venture engine. That's awesome. So this actually surfaced yesterday with another public company. I can't say which one. But the idea of co-creating things with their customers is something they want to do more of. But they haven't been getting the traction that they want. And the CEO's unlock was every one of those customers is trying to figure out AI. And if we worked with them, we could facilitate it where we use the AI models to do the interviewing. Like, everybody brings their shared data. And then we use the AI models to interview them to aggregate their feedback to lay out a roadmap of where there's new products that could be created that the customer would want to buy. Wow. Sit on that one. Five, make leaders accountable for personal AI adoption. Why cultural change doesn't trickle down at cascades from the top? What to add? Require each leader to share their personal AI use weekly. Plus one team win. Normalize micro failures as learnings. That's really important. Without this, this nation remains Steve Bartos' program instead of an enterprise priority. What do you thoughts? I love it. I mean, all five. It's just another example of things that have crossed my mind. And then they get lost in the noise. And so here I have it. And it's very clear and quite frankly, simple to execute. It's just a matter of doing it. And then the next question is, do you want me to put it in a template, which is basically my roadmap, right? So exactly. So before we go there, let's throw one twist at it. Great. Now be my board. And you're in a bad mood. You're not buying what we're selling. Help us see where all the holes are that we don't see. Because we think these five are awesome. Help us see what we still don't see. Then make it better. See what happens here. So here's the real playbook. Move from messaging to movement. Create AI ambassadors at every department, not just super user storytellers. Hold town halls where employees share what AI changed for them. Use AI to analyze internal sentiment weekly and publish anonymized findings. Don't be afraid, doesn't change people. Seeing their peers win with AI does. Number two, turn big bet teams into funded incubators. Give them a budget. Give them autonomy. Give them stakes. Meet with them monthly as a shark tank-style board. Require at least two external pilots with customers in 90 days. Big bets are nothing without skin in the game and external signal. Operationalized leader accountability. Every SLT member gets a weekly AI log. What did you try? What failed? What's next? Link AI fluency to comp reviews. Create an AI fluency score for each business unit. Culture is what you incentivized, not what you say. Build a rolling roadmap, not just gates. Create a living, rolling 90-day roadmap with must-win metrics and blockers. Assign owners to every transformation domain, workflow, training, value capture, et cetera. Publish progress weekly, transparently. Your transformation should feel like a wartime accountability, not peacetime planning. Number five, look beyond the org, become a platform. Can you productize an internal AI workflow and sell it to suppliers or industry peers? Could Worthington host an annual AI in steel summit and claim the category? If you're early, own it. You're not just transforming a company. You're positioning to transform an industry. Board consensus, you've got energy, leadership, and early traction. But you're at risk of delivering a solid internal initiative when you have the chance to spark an industry leading revolution. Don't settle for small wins. Amazing. What about that is amazing for you? Or what about that's helpful for you? Well, first of all, the obvious is the speed and how well specific it's articulated, right? But it's delivered in a format that I said it earlier. It's the roadmap. It's the clear risk. At the same time, it's saying, hey, this is a great idea. This could be transformational. But you have to make sure that you're focusing on all things. Here's some specifics. Here's the roadmap. Here's how you go about holding the team accountable and yourself. And it's done in 15 minutes. Are you using AI to be the challenger at all? No, just been thought starters and think harder. I have not, which, of course, I will be after this. This is fantastic. I've been reflecting on what are my 20% use cases that I'm probably the percent of the time. I'm always writing crit to think through something to get to a draft. Then I will give it feedback on what I like about the draft, what I don't like about the draft, where I see opportunities to improve it. What it regenerates is the best that I can come up with, with AI as a thought partner. The next level is I will flip it and say, great, now be the challenger or be my board. Now, me telling it that it was in a bad mood, really amped up the directness. I actually didn't like that tone as much. I just would have said, be tough on me. Don't buy what I'm selling. Like, tell me what I'm still not seeing. It would have toned it down a little bit. That invoking of the challenger tends to work. The next level is then I flip it and say, now be my ideal customer, which in your case might be the internal employees. That's right, yeah. And tell me what I'm missing from your perspective. Like that combo of, I get to draft, I give it feedback. Then I have the challenger give me feedback. Then I have the customer give me feedback and feedback is always three things. What do you like about it? What don't you like about it? What can I improve? Then improve it. Right. And that is, I mean, you could just play with that for the next six months. That's right. Yes, that's great, Jeff. Now you have built an AI board. I have. How's it working? It's been great. And of course, now you know I'm excited to start using it as the challenging partner. I'm just very early on with it. So who's on the board? So we have our founder, John H. McConnell on my board. I have Abraham Lincoln, my favorite president on the board. I have John Rossman on the board. Mary Barra from GM on the board and Warren Buffett on my board. I will email you the entire thread. Copy and paste the whole thread into your board. I can't wait. I had this conversation, ask Abe. I can't wait. How he would handle it. I know. I can't wait. I can't wait either. Hold on. Hold on. I can't wait either. There we go. All right. Now be Abraham Lincoln. What do you see that we are still missing? Spoken plainly from the heart is Lincoln Wood. Well now you've done something admirable stirred the spirit of progress in your people. That's no small thing. But if you allow me, I'll speak to you as a boardroom or as a boardman or technologist, but as a man who sees what happens when a nation or a company changes faster, then it's character can hold all what I see missing in this. You're tending to the rails, but not to the souls of the railway. For layering track, education, pilots, new team, dashboards, but I ask you, have you brought the soul of your people with you? Because technology will race ahead without asking permission, but people, they ask, do I belong in this future? Do I matter more or less than I used to? If I give my best, will it be seen? These aren't questions solved with bullet points. They're answered with leadership that listens, honors, and uplifts. Let me offer you three truths you may not yet see. One, the middle manager holds your future, but they become caught in the middle. They're not resistant to change. They're translating survival. You must deputize them, not just inform them. Make them builders of the bridge, not traffic cops on the tracks. The men and women on the floor, they deserve to see themselves in the AI story. Not in a memo, but in a moment. A supervisor who says, here's how this saved me time. A peer who says, this let me be home with my kids on time. Do that and you won't win adoption, you'll win hearts. Three, your duty is not to the machines, it's to elevate man through the use of them. If all you gain is efficiency, you traded legacy for speed. But if you build a company where man's mind is multiplied, his dignity intact and his contributions expanded, then sir, you have done something worthy of your position. So what are you still missing? You're missing a human constitution for your AI transformation. Write it, share it, let it say plainly, here at Worthington Steel, we believe man shall not be replaced, but rather released into his greatest potential. That sir is how revolutions endure. Shall we begin drafting it together? How great is that? That just happened. I know exactly what you're doing tonight, I mean, 100%, that is so cool. And so what you expect from him, that's why he's on my board, that's the first method that you want. He's going on my board, wow, this is one of those moments, it happens to me, baby, every other week at this point where like, I'm almost speechless, that's one of them. Yeah, very, very cool, I'm right with you. Dude, I'm so glad we did this. Yes, me too. Well, Jeff, any questions you have before we wrap up? Now, Jeff, I mean, just grateful for the help that you've provided along the way here. And that includes just being part of the collective, I'm excited to continue to participate in that. It's great to be able to get in a room with a bunch of different leaders. Some maybe a little behind us, some at the same place or a little ahead and just talk about some of the challenges that we have and successes. I think it's hugely beneficial. And then in addition to that, we're all trying to understand what's coming next. You know, we're all wanting to think ahead as business leaders. And so allowing us to have that view of what we may expect in 12, 18, 24 months, that's certainly going to help me and others as we're thinking about this strategic priority and what's to come next, so appreciate it. And thanks for having me, you know, participating in this. It's been outstanding, mind blowing at times. Well, the pleasure is mine and I'm grateful for you, your leadership, you know, for me when I was starting this, I didn't want it to be about me and I didn't want to be the guy with all the answers. Yeah. I wanted to surround myself with some of the smartest leaders in the room who genuinely wanted to harness this to build better businesses and better lives and you clearly are a reflection of that. So I'm loving getting to watch the journey that you and the team are on and I can't wait to see what this looks like in a few years. Well, I appreciate that. Our team appreciates that very much. Thank you. We had our conversation with Jeff Gilmore. The first thing that saved out to me, even listening back to it is I gave you spumps. I think this was such a cool use case. But what excites me most about this is how this can apply to every single one of you. As a leader, you know, this is the future. And while this technology is truly incredible, if your people don't adopt it, it's the best technology that no one uses. And this is your role as a leader is to lead that change. And my realization is my ability to think through very strategic things like driving change leadership through a company. If I do that the old way by relying on my own human judgment and processing power, I'm putting a ceiling over what's possible. But when you look to AI as a thought parlor to enhance your thinking, you can unlock a whole new level of creativity and strategy, and that's what you watched here. So my challenge to you is to pick a problem that you are facing that matters, that if you could solve it, it would unlock a new level of growth and to harness the crit framework to think it through. But when you get that first answer, don't accept it's challenge it, ask it to invoke the challenger to tell you what it likes about it, what it doesn't like about it. And the top changes you can make to it and see where that lack of sufficiency is in your current thinking. And then if there's somebody that you admire that you wish you could tap into their wisdom like your version of Abraham Lincoln, ask AI to simulate how that person might think and have them give you feedback on where it's strong, where it's weak, and the top changes you can make. This is something that truly has the potential to change the trajectory of your results. For Jeff, this is going to become a rallying cry inside the organization that will make this easy for you. We have already prepared our AI thought partner to help you. It's available to you at aidership.com/thoughtpartner. This is our AI model that is specifically designed to drive strategic thinking and help you grow enterprise value. It understands crit on a deep level. You can click a button and it will just start asking you questions to pull the context, so roll the task out of your head and help you move the ball meaningfully on that challenge or problem that you surface right now. I strongly encourage you to go do it. You will thank me later. If this episode brought value to you and you want to make sure you catch the next one, make sure you click the subscribe button so all future episodes are downloaded. If you've not yet read the AI driven leader, this is becoming the go to playbook for leaders around the world. It is turning the lights on because it's helping you use this strategically with all the prompts that are in the book. If you are a C-suite executive of a mid-market to enterprise company, you know you've got to figure AI out, but deep down, you don't feel like you're an AI expert. We've got you covered. Head over to aireadeadership.com and you can learn about the different ways that we can guide you. Whether it be workshops for your executive team, to pulling some of your C-suite leaders into our AI driven leadership collective, where we teach you how to drive this strategically in a way to keep you ahead of the competition, and to our advisory services where we actually partner with you to help harness the technology to grow your enterprise value and your competitive advantage. Bottom line, it's time to think differently because the future does not wait and you should know.