I’m so tired of talking about AI AND ALSO I’m having such fascinating conversations about AI. Two things can be true. AI is everywhere in my conversations. And I love that but I also hate it. I'm not here to be an AI hype girly and also, you can do some really freaking cool things with it.

Offsite in the next 6 weeks? Quick check: Do you know the agenda yet? How much pre-reading will land 48 hours before? Is your camaraderie activity just cool or will it meaningfully help different people have fun? How many slide presentations are planned? If any of these made you wince let's talk.

There’s a pretty common saying right now that you won’t lose your job to AI but you’ll lose your job to someone who knows how to use/leverage AI. I wrote recently about how AI is changing how you do your job and how to think about tasks. Check it out here: daydreamsinruby.com/blog/2026-04...

Why AI Won't Replace Your Job But Will Change How You Do It

Everyone's caught between AI hype and FOMO, but the real shift is quieter: the tedious, time-consuming parts of our work are becoming outsourceable, and that looks different for every role. Here's how...

daydreamsinruby.com

The hidden cost of most workshops is the false sense of progress: good conversations, hopeful energy, same meeting six months later. The difference between team bonding and business transformation: make real tradeoffs visible, turn discussion into decisions, leave with owners + next steps.

If your brain is on overdrive lately, you’re in good company. Mental bandwidth is at a premium these days and this month's newsletter is all about holding both the high-level stuff AND the things keeping you sane right now. Read it here: seasonedleadership.substack.com/p/mind-machi...

Mind, Machine, & Mozzarella

Your mental bandwidth is prime real estate

seasonedleadership.substack.com

71% of professionals believe AI will eliminate more jobs than it creates. Only 20% are worried about their own job. People expect the disruption, they just don't think it'll happen to them. The worst thing you can do is more cheerleading. Name the fear. Then invest in your people.

In Gallup's 2026 report 65% of workers say AI boosted their individual productivity. Only 12% say it transformed how work gets done in their org. Individual lift, org flatline. The gap closes with managers: employees with active manager support are 8.7x more likely to say AI transformed their work.

Manager engagement dropped 9 points since 2022. They're now about as engaged as the people they manage. Wider spans, fewer peers, same expectation to hold everything together. Managers are usually the first investment cut and the last group given real development. That's the problem.

Manager engagement is in continued global decline, but Gallup found within best-practice orgs 79% of managers were engaged, nearly 4x the global average. Same labor market. Same AI disruption. The difference isn't conditions. It's whether leadership decided this actually matters and built around it.

Global engagement hit 20% in 2025, its lowest since 2020. Most teams respond with a survey or a happy hour. But engagement isn't built in a single event. It's built on random Tuesdays: priorities people can repeat, clear decision rights, feedback loops that actually close. Source: Gallup 2026 report

If your AI training is still teaching prompting, it's out of date. What people actually want to learn now: - Integrating AI into their real workflows (58%) - Using AI agents (51%) - Building no-code tools for their own tasks (45%) Source: SmarterX 2026 State of AI for Business Report

Even as someone who's been facilitating for over two decades, this facilitation certification program strengthened my strengths and I learned so much about improving the most challenging situations. Apps open for the second cohort, running mid-Sep to mid-Nov: northern.virginia.edu/programs/cif/

Certificate in Facilitation - UVA Northern Virginia

The UVA | Northern Virginia Customer Experience Leadership Institute is designed specifically for government CX and industry leaders who are committed to elevating their approach to customer experienc...

northern.virginia.edu

Whether a company actually gets anywhere with AI isn't size or budget, it's whether they have a roadmap: the thing that comes out of a room full of the right people making real decisions about what matters, in what order, and who owns it. Source: SmarterX 2026 State of AI for Business Report

Hiring an assistant helped me tremendously but only once I started treating delegation like a system. I know the handoff is hard, so I created a roadmap to getting started with someone. This funky graphic summary shows what you’ll learn and get in my course tavlinconsulting.gumroad.com/l/mental-load

Miren v0.12.0 ships Miren Anywhere: your cluster dials out, Miren's edge carries traffic back, and my-chores.miren.app can be served straight off a laptop in the kitchen 👩‍🍳💻 The "deploy works but the URL times out" wall, gone 🔄✨ miren.dev/blog/miren-a...

Miren Anywhere - Miren

Put a private cluster's apps on the internet. No port forwarding, no static IP, nothing dialing in.

miren.dev

As a parent I make a hundred tiny decisions a day. My to-do list is relentless. I’ve started using AI for the “small stuff” that adds up. Parents ask me what to try first and how to do it without it feeling weird or overwhelming, so I’m hosting a special AI for Parents workshop on 7/29. DM for info!

We’ve officially moved past the experimenting with AI phase and landed in the era of restructuring. This month's newsletter dives into navigating this uncharted world, building new professional infrastructures and maneuvering what this means at home: seasonedleadership.substack.com/p/the-messy-...

The Messy Reality of AI Transformation

Era of restructuring: we're in the building-infrastructure-around-AI stage

seasonedleadership.substack.com

So excited for my friend Katie Sheketoff! Her book, Uncharted Leadership, is officially out today! If you’re leading through disruption you didn't choose (reorgs, AI, change that doesn't slow down) and what helped before isn’t helping now, you should definitely check it out: amzn.to/4otvH4L

Hello old friend

I'm loud and proud about being both a mom and someone who focuses on my career and wrote about all that in Motherly recently. About the framework that finally helped me stop apologizing for the trade-offs every working parent is constantly making. Hope you enjoy it: www.mother.ly/career-money...

I hired five virtual assistants before I found one that actually worked. None of them could hold what I actually needed until I built the *system* that finally worked. I turned that system into a course to help you shortcut what I went through: tavlinconsulting.gumroad.com/l/mental-load

Delegate Your Mental Load: A Roadmap to Finding, Onboarding, and Training a Virtual Assistant

If you're a business owner, solopreneur, parent, or both, you know the feeling. It's not just the tasks on your to-do list. It's the mental weight of tracking everything, remembering the details, maki...

tavlinconsulting.gumroad.com

It’s reorg season! Reposting some of my reorg pieces: Things leaders should do after a reorg: daydreamsinruby.com/blog/2025-08... Things managers should do after a reorg: daydreamsinruby.com/blog/2025-10... Managing org change so individuals don’t get lost: daydreamsinruby.com/blog/2026-01...

Hiring a VA before you're ready doesn't buy back time, it buys a new part-time job: managing confusion. I know because I lived it **five times** before I figured out what actually makes delegation work. So I built the roadmap I wish I'd had: tavlinconsulting.gumroad.com/l/mental-load

Delegate Your Mental Load: A Roadmap to Finding, Onboarding, and Training a Virtual Assistant

If you're a business owner, solopreneur, parent, or both, you know the feeling. It's not just the tasks on your to-do list. It's the mental weight of tracking everything, remembering the details, maki...

tavlinconsulting.gumroad.com

Speed mentoring is back! 15-minute sessions, bring whatever's on your mind: AI, engineering best practices, a meeting you want to run better, an offsite you're planning, anything worth talking through. 15 minutes is enough time to get unstuck on something. July 22: calendly.com/asheren/spee...

The biggest barrier to scaling AI and driving true adoption isn't “we don’t know enough” anymore. It's time. Your team is stuck because there is no time to stop, think and figure out how this actually changes the work. Source: SmarterX 2026 State of AI for Business Report

53% of orgs say they've moved past experimenting with AI but only 28% feel real momentum. It makes sense. Individuals just grab a tool and go. Orgs can't. Scaling AI means alignment, buy-in and culture change on top of everyone's actual job. Source: SmarterX 2026 State of AI for Business Report

The difference between a mediocre conference and a great one is entirely a mindset shift. From 'I'll see who I run into' to 'I'm going to actively connect' turns a passive conference into one that builds real relationships. Honored to be featured in HearstLab! www.linkedin.com/pulse/before...

Your to-do list isn't the real problem. It's everything that isn't written down: the mental load. My new course walks you through finding, onboarding and training a VA who actually frees up your time AND your brain. 50% off first 25 with code 'FIRST25': tavlinconsulting.gumroad.com/l/mental-load

Delegate Your Mental Load: A Roadmap to Finding, Onboarding, and Training a Virtual Assistant

If you're a business owner, solopreneur, parent, or both, you know the feeling. It's not just the tasks on your to-do list. It's the mental weight of tracking everything, remembering the details, maki...

tavlinconsulting.gumroad.com

Missing my kids this week but don't worry, I have the creepy 3d printed child-sized person they made to keep me company.