The AI Labor Playbook

AI isn’t just a tool—it’s a new kind of labor. Yet most organizations are still approaching generative AI like software procurement. 

Download the AI Labor Playbook:

In most high-performing organizations, every team feels under-resourced. The backlog always outpaces the headcount, and internal investment decisions often turn into zero-sum battles. But a new paradigm is emerging: with generative AI, organizations can now tap into scalable, on-demand AI labor. Instead of waiting weeks for another team to prioritize their request, a marketing analyst can generate a dashboard, a team lead can optimize SEO content, and a product manager can do deep analysis of customer feedback—all within minutes. This shift doesn’t just ease pressure; it unlocks the ability for individuals to prototype, experiment, and execute without waiting for permission, budget, or another team’s capacity.

But here’s the catch: AI labor doesn’t manage itself. It’s fast, flexible, and powerful—but only when people know how to lead it. That means identifying the right opportunities, crafting useful prompts, and supervising the results with care. The biggest bottleneck isn’t the AI—it’s the fact that most people were never trained to work this way. We didn’t grow up collaborating with systems that can simulate a customer persona, generate code, or produce market analysis in natural language. Directing AI labor is a new skill—part communication, part systems thinking—and building that skill across your organization is essential if you want to scale the value of AI beyond a few power users or tools.

I’m sharing this a new guide that reframes how organizations should think about AI adoption. It discusses the concept of "AI as labor"—and lays out a model for building an internal AI labor market, empowering your people to lead AI work, and avoiding the costly traps of vendor lock-in and fragmented tools.