Pre-Flight Checklist: A Letter to Leaders (Post #18 of 20)
What is the AI future we are feeding?
What is the AI future we are feeding? One built on courage and governance, or one built on speed and chaos?
There is a pivotal scene in Tomorrowland (2015) where the villain (played by Hugh Laurie) explains why humanity is spiraling toward collapse. He delivers one of the most brutal monologues from any futuristic film.
He explains that humanity was shown a vision of its own destruction, not as a prophecy but as a warning. Providing time to course-correct.
And, in case you’re like me and aren’t always somewhere you can click on video links, read this:
“Let’s imagine... if you glimpsed the future, you were frightened by what you saw, what would you do with that information? You would go to... the politicians, captains of industry? And how would you convince them? Data? Facts? Good luck! The only facts they won’t challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in…
The probability of wide-spread annihilation kept going up. The only way to stop it was to show it. To scare people straight. Because, what reasonable human being wouldn’t be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they’ve ever known or loved? To save civilization, I would show its collapse.
But, how do you think this vision was received? How do you think people responded to the prospect of imminent doom? They gobbled it up like a chocolate eclair! They didn’t fear their demise, they re-packaged it...
It could be enjoyed as video-games, as TV shows, books, movies, the entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse and sprinted towards it with gleeful abandon. Meanwhile, your Earth was crumbling all around you…
In every moment there’s the possibility of a better future, but you people won’t believe it. And because you won’t believe it, you won’t do what is necessary to make it a reality.
You resign yourselves to it for one reason, because *that* future does not ask anything of you today.
So yes, we saw the iceberg and warned the Titanic. But you all just steered for it anyway, full steam ahead. Why? Because you want to sink! You gave up!” ~ Hugh Laurie playing Governor Nix in “Tommorowland”
That speech stems from a deeper metaphor in the film that tells a parable of two wolves. Inside every person, there are two wolves. One represents fear, despair, cynicism and apathy. The other represents courage, hope, creativity and discipline.
Which wolf wins? The one you feed. ~”Tomorrowland” (2015)
He was making a simple point. Humanity fed the wrong wolf.
Looking back through history, the psychological root of every governance failure steps from feeding the wolf that rewards instant gratification instead of responsibility.
We made the choice. We make the choice. We will make the choice.
We have a choice.
I wanted to write a letter to our world’s storytellers in every country to do that thing you do so well and give a voice to the people. Not the politicians. Not the radicals. Not the evangelists.
Storytellers give people who don’t have the mic a voice to say how technology impacts them. They want AI. They need AI. But they also want the guardrails that allow society to function through governance, security and transparency. The boring stuff that protects the beautiful stuff.
Dear Storytellers, Be our voice. Help the world adopt AI through governance, security and transparency.
But I’m going to have to write a different letter. Because the storytellers ARE doing their thing. They are writing. They’ve been getting books, plays, movies, and songs published for centuries saying exactly what the rest of us are saying about the future. The silent majority that want intentional thought and planning to accompany growth.
The problem isn’t the storytellers. The problem is that the people powerful enough to implement guardrails aren’t listening. Because hype pays better than planning.
As we wade through our social media and news feeds through the amount of AI-generated opinions and vanilla-rewrites of authentic opinions, it all starts to blur together.
My hairdresser doesn’t care what an LLM is. The doctor operating on you doesn’t understand the currency of a token or how you are handling model weights. There’s an entire world outside of big tech that are the recipients of decisions made by a very small group of people inside a very big machine.
So, this is a different letter than I planned to write. Because, Hugh Laurie stole my thunder and I didn’t even know that speech existed until I started searching for an powerful movie analogy.
This post is a letter to leaders. A call to leadership. A call for courage. A call to the architects of governance.
Three Step Framework: Be an AI Adoption Leader
You don’t need a podium or title. You need courage to influence change.
Find the Internal Storytellers. Your organization already has them. The trusted voices and the key influencers. The “Simon Sinek” types who speak in clarity, not complexity. These are the people who others instinctively listen to.
Start with One Story Worth Telling. Pick one workflow, one product or one process that is broken or inefficient. Then ask, “How could AI meaningfully improve this without compromising trust or clarity?”
Don’t boil the ocean. Light a beacon.
Apply a single AI solution to it until it sticks. Commit to a single use case. Pilot it, measure it and improve it. Then tell the story of how you made it work, including the guardrails you added. This is the key to cultural adoption. One sticky success at a time.
Test Flight: Tell the AI Adoption Story in Your Organization
Try this out over the next 48 hours.
Identify Your Three Trusted Voices. Who do people listen to in your organization? Who shapes belief and trust? It’s not always, more often than not, the leadership team.
Choose ONE broken workflow that could benefit from AI automation. Make sure it’s repeatable, measurable, visible and one of the most annoying things that people want fixed.
Craft the Story. “Here’s the problem we solved. Here’s how AI helped. Here’s the guardrail the ensured trust. Here’s the value it created.” Now go tell that story three times: in a meeting, in writing and to leadership. YOU are feeding the right wolf.
Mission Debrief
How did it go?
Did you find your storytellers? Did you find a problem worth solving and have the courage to do something about it? Does your leadership have courage?
“Tomorrowland” ends with a simple truth: The future is not decided. It’s chosen through the stories we choose to amplify.
This is your shot at immortality. Be the voice that sparks humanity to THINK differently.
And feed the right wolf.
Excellent analysis! How do we ensure leaders take AI warnings seriously without re-packaging them? So insightful.
It’s very difficult for many people to choose responsibility over instant gratification. I keep thinking that we’d do better to promote therapy and counseling rather than anything else :)