Coming Up
The difference between friction that’s waste and friction that’s wisdom
How AI tempts us to confuse a finished draft with finished thinking
The one question to ask about the work you most want to protect
What if some of the slowness in your work is worth protecting?
It’s not a popular question when every AI tool around you promises to make you faster. But it may be one of the most important ones you ask as a leader this year.
Welcome back to our 5-Day HUMAN Leadership Audit.
AI has made optimization feel like the obvious goal. Faster drafts. Faster analysis. Faster meetings. Faster decisions. Faster everything. And sometimes, faster really is better.
But not always.
Today is about the parts of leadership that lose something when you rush them – and how to tell the difference between friction that’s a waste and friction that adds value.
Before we jump in, here’s a quick reminder of where we are this week:
Day 2 – U: Unoptimize What Matters (you are here)
Day 3 – M: Make Meaning Before Making More
Day 4 – A: Audit Atrophy
Day 5 – N: Name the Non-Negotiables
Some Friction Is Wisdom
When a tool can remove friction from almost anything, it becomes tempting to treat all friction as a design flaw.
But friction is not always the same thing as inefficiency.
Some friction really is waste. A clunky approval process. A meeting that exists because nobody changed the habit. A report that takes three hours to create and five minutes to ignore. AI is excellent at helping leaders find and remove this kind of drag. Used well, it can give people time back, reduce busywork, and make room for better thinking.
But other friction is not waste at all. It is the slower human work underneath the output.
AI can draft an all-hands announcement in seconds. But deciding what actually needs to be said takes longer.
You may need to think through what people are worried about, what they have heard before, what they no longer believe, and where your message might sound polished but not honest. The announcement is the fast part. The leadership is in the slower work of making it true, clear, and trustworthy.
AI can summarize a stack of employee feedback almost instantly. But the real value may come from sitting with the themes you do not particularly want to see.
Are people confused because the strategy is unclear? Are they disengaged because priorities keep changing? Are they asking for more communication when what they actually need is more consistency? A summary can be fast. Acceptance is slower.
AI can generate a strategy deck, a decision memo, or a list of pros and cons. But it cannot give you conviction you have not earned.
Sometimes the useful friction is the back-and-forth before the decision: the debate, the doubt, the awkward question, the moment when someone says, “I know this looks efficient, but I don’t think it’s right.” That slowness can feel inconvenient. It can also be where the better decision enters.
AI can produce ideas quickly too – but originality rarely comes from accepting the first coherent version of something.
Originality usually comes from staying with the problem a little longer, asking what has not been said yet, noticing the point everyone keeps circling but not naming, and letting your own experience complicate the obvious answer.
AI can help us move faster through the parts of leadership work that do not need our full humanity. But it can also tempt us to confuse a finished artifact with finished thinking.
I’ll be honest with you. As an ISFJ personality type (Defender), I find a tidy, well-optimized system deeply satisfying. I like clarity. I like dependability. I like the feeling that things are in their proper place. So the idea that some inefficiency is worth protecting did not come naturally to me.
But the more AI helps me speed things up, the more I notice that some of the most important parts of leading people were never meant to be fast.
So this week, instead of asking how to make everything faster, try asking a different question: what deserves to stay slow?
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Your Action Item
Yesterday, you named one thing you’d keep fully human – the part of your leadership too important to hand over to AI.
Today, look at that same thing again and ask a different question: where might a little slowness or friction actually make it better?
What did you find? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Next Up: Tomorrow, in Day 3 – M: Make Meaning Before Making More, we look at what happens to people’s sense of purpose when AI changes the work itself – and how leaders can help their teams manage the hard feelings that arise.