A few months ago, I was sitting in our year-end reviews.

I had one colleague after another in front of me. We were going through the usual script. Strengths. Wins. Then that awkward pivot to “growth areas.”

You know the one.

“Here’s what you did well, and here’s what you need to work on…”

It hit me halfway through the conversations: I didn’t care about fixing weaknesses anymore.

What if we stopped trying to fix people?

Most companies still think the goal is to round everyone out.

If someone’s not strategic, train them.

If they’re not technical, send them a course.

If they don’t write well, make them blog more.

It sounds responsible. Progressive, even. But what does it really do?

It pulls people away from what they’re already great at, and in a small focused team like ours, that’s a mistake we can’t afford to keep making.

So this year, we flipped the script.

Instead of asking “How do we fix this?”, I’m asking “How do we surround this?”

Let me tell you about Hendra.

Hendra runs support for us. He’s not the kind of person who just closes tickets. He connects with people. He spots emotion between the lines. He earns trust.

That’s his brilliance, but it used to come at a cost.

Behind every meaningful interaction were hours of manual cleanup, scanning logs, categorizing issues, digging into patterns that no one had time to untangle.

The part he loved – the human part – was getting buried in the rest.

So he made a shift.

He started using AI to surface trends, to summarize conversations, to spot gaps in our documentation before they became problems, and to build the beginnings of tools that could multiply his work; not just for himself, but for the whole team.

He didn’t become a data analyst. He just got dangerous enough to change the game.

“I still do what I love, which is connecting with people. AI just helps me do it better and faster. The goal was never to do less, but to focus more on what truly matters.” – Hendra

That’s the new model.

I don’t want a marketer who’s trying to learn SQL.

I don’t want a developer rewriting copy.

I don’t want a strategist spending their best hours in spreadsheets.

What I want, and what we’re building, is a team where everyone leans deeper into their sharpest edge and uses AI to stretch just far enough beyond it.

Not to become an expert. Just to get 80% of the way there, fast, so they can keep moving, keep creating, and keep thinking clearly.

This isn’t “jack of all trades”, and it’s definitely not “master of none”. It’s something else entirely.

Brilliant at one thing. Dangerous at ten.

AI doesn’t replace talent. It surrounds it.

That’s the idea I want our team to understand.

It’s not about outsourcing judgment or replacing anyone.

It’s about buying back the space for better judgment to happen.

When I think about how we want to work – how we need to work – it’s not by trying to patch every gap with a course or a checklist.

It’s by turning people into sharper versions of themselves with the support they need to move faster, see clearer, and stay focused on what matters.

This year, we’re not fixing weaknesses. We’re not stretching people thin. We’re not waiting for unicorns.

We’re building a team of focused, human-first contributors, each one brilliant at one thing, dangerous at ten, and backed by tools that let them do the best work of their lives.

Because in a world full of noise, pressure, and burnout…

That’s how we stay sharp.

That’s how we stay human.

That’s how we win.