I was reviewing my notetaker’s notes the other day after a meeting.
They were immaculate. Perfectly sorted, action steps clearly highlighted, even the smallest contextual details captured accurately. We use Motion, which meant those action items had already been translated into tasks and offered to be placed into my calendar before the call had officially ended.
The efficiency was undeniable and so was the feeling that followed.
Irrelevance is the closest word I can find, although disappointment and a quiet sense of embarrassment were not far behind. For a brief moment, it felt like I had skipped a step I was supposed to earn.
I used to write my notes by hand, then summarize them thoughtfully, and finally send a follow-up that reflected both the content of the conversation and the tone of the people in the room. The process took time, attention, and energy, and there was something deeply human about it. The effort felt like part of the value.
Now the same outcome appears instantly, cleaner and more comprehensive than I would have produced on my own, without the mental fatigue that used to accompany it.
That was the moment it felt like cheating.
Not cheating the work, but cheating the part of me that believed contribution had to be earned through effort, friction, and a certain amount of strain to count.
Once the initial reaction passed, it became clear that this experience is not unique to me. Versions of this moment are unfolding quietly across organizations every day. Tasks that once consumed large portions of our time are now completed almost invisibly, creating space while simultaneously raising uncomfortable questions about relevance, contribution, and identity at work.
When something no longer requires your hands, your pen, or your late nights, it forces a reckoning with where your value truly sits. For leaders whose credibility was built on being the hardest worker in the room, that realization can feel destabilizing.
The cultural narrative many of us inherited equated hard work with worth, struggle with growth, and endurance with leadership. That narrative is no longer holding up under modern conditions.
Working harder does not automatically make someone a better contributor, a smarter decision-maker, or a more effective leader. Struggle is no longer a proxy for impact, and exhaustion is not a leadership signal worth preserving.
The environment has changed.
The organizations that are thriving now are not rewarding grit in isolation. They are rewarding judgment, adaptability, discernment, and the ability to leverage resources intelligently.
Resourcefulness has quietly overtaken effort as the differentiator.
We now operate with an overwhelming number of tools at our fingertips, and using them does not make leaders redundant. It allows leaders to move faster, think more clearly, and direct their energy toward work that actually requires human presence, context, and responsibility. It also affords us the ability to operate sustainably without sacrificing health, attention, or basic human needs.
I've written before about performative productivity, the illusion created by long hours, visible busyness, and full calendars that look impressive but rarely translate into meaningful outcomes. This reflection felt different, though, because it exposed how deeply personal those old productivity narratives still are, even for those of us who intellectually know better.
When a machine handles something you once took pride in doing manually, the instinct is to question whether something meaningful has been lost. In reality, what is being challenged is not usefulness, but identity.
The human contribution was never the transcription, the formatting, or the task entry (logically, I'm thrilled I no longer have to do that). The human contribution has always been the interpretation, the judgment, the decision-making, and the relationships that surround the work.
For leaders navigating this shift, here are a few reframes that have proven helpful for me.
- Value is no longer measured by how much
effort something takes, but by the quality of thinking it enables. Letting go of inefficient processes is not a shortcut or a compromise of standards. It is a reallocation of attention.
- The work that still requires leadership has become clearer, not
smaller. Judgment, prioritization, sense-making, and human connection remain firmly outside the reach of automation, even as tools become more capable of supporting them.
- Technology should be used to buy back humanity, not
replace it. When the mechanics are handled well, leaders have more capacity to listen fully, think strategically, and show up with presence rather than urgency.
- Emotional reactions to new tools deserve attention before operational decisions are made. Discomfort, resistance, or embarrassment are signals worth examining rather than
suppressing, particularly in environments that are changing quickly.
The real risk facing leaders today is not replacement by technology. The greater risk lies in holding onto outdated definitions of value that no longer serve the organization or the people within it.
The effectiveness of leadership, or the merit of work for that matter, has never been about doing everything manually; it was just all we had to work with.
If this reflection resonates, consider where effort is still being used as a stand-in for impact in your own work, and what might become possible if those two were finally untangled.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk,
Kendra
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