An answer before the coffee cools
Ask a reasonably good question today and, before your coffee has a chance to cool, artificial intelligence can give you an answer. It can summarize the research, organize the options, draft the communication, anticipate objections, and make the whole thing look remarkably polished.
That is useful. It is also a little dangerous.
Polish has always looked a lot like competence from across the room. Now almost anyone can produce a polished answer. The question for leaders is no longer simply, ‘Can we get the information?’ We can. The better question is: ‘Do we know enough to decide what to do with it?’
A correct answer can still create the wrong result
In people decisions, context changes everything. A behavioral pattern may accurately describe how someone is naturally wired. It cannot, by itself, tell you whether that behavior is the source of the problem.
Is the employee struggling because the role is a poor fit—or because the manager has never clearly defined success? Is the executive team moving slowly because the styles around the table are different—or because no one knows who owns the decision? Is the candidate wrong for the job—or did five stakeholders quietly build five different jobs in their heads?
The data may be right. The conclusion can still be wrong.
What fourteen years teaches you
I have worked with The Predictive Index since 2012. In that time, I have learned as much from what happened after the recommendation as I did from the science behind it.
You learn when to trust the obvious interpretation and when to keep asking. You learn that a leader can use accurate data to justify a decision already made. You learn that ‘different styles’ sometimes means different styles—and sometimes disguises a performance problem no one wants to name. You learn that the scientifically sound answer may still fail if trust, timing, politics, or accountability are ignored.
Experience does not make a person infallible. It does make more patterns visible.
Use AI for speed. Keep responsibility for the decision.
PI is extending behavioral insight into everyday work through AI, including Obi. Features and availability are evolving. The opportunity is to help leaders prepare and think more clearly—not to hand over responsibility for a people decision.
Use the technology to explore, prepare, compare, and ask better questions. Then slow down long enough to test the premise: What business outcome are we trying to improve? What evidence says behavior is the constraint? What are we assuming? What happens if we are wrong? And what decision will actually change because of this insight?
AI can help us reach an answer faster. Wisdom is knowing when we have not yet asked the right question.