Take Your Own Job Before Someone Else Does

Mar 31

"I get this question all the time from family and friends: 'Is AI going to replace humans?' What I tell them is largely, AI’s not going to replace humans. There'll be some functions that absolutely will be, but the thing I can tell you is the humans and organizations using AI are going to replace humans in the organizations not using AI. It's that black and white."
— Brad Anderson, President of Product, Engineering and UX at Qualtrics

Let that sink in for a moment. AI isn't coming for your job. But someone using AI almost certainly is.

So why not take your own job before someone else does?

The Self-Disruption Imperative

This concept might sound familiar if you've followed innovation theory. When Amazon noticed the iPod was decimating their CD sales (then their third-largest category), Jeff Bezos didn't wait for someone else to disrupt their book business (their #1 category). He commissioned Steve Kessel, who was then head of physical book sales, “Your job is to kill your own business. I want you to proceed as if your goal is to put everyone selling physical books out of a job.”

The result? The Kindle and Kindle Direct Publishing—innovations that ensured Amazon's dominance in the digital book market rather than becoming another Borders.

In the age of innovation, the organizations that disrupt themselves survive. In the age of AI, the individuals who disrupt themselves will thrive.

Your job will be disrupted by AI, whether your boss knows it or not. The only question is whether you'll be the one doing the disrupting.

Commission Yourself

Noah Brier is building a totally new kind of AI-powered advisory for CMOs. When we asked him (on Beyond the Prompt) who the most AI-proficient folks he’s working with are, he observed, “What I'm finding is they are not the person with that ‘job.’ They're the person who sort of just found a way to get going with it. They just figured out ways to integrate it into their work. And, normally it started outside of their work.”

Don't wait for your boss to give you permission or a mandate to explore AI. Don't expect a formal innovation initiative. Don't wait for training.

Commission yourself.

Your boss might not see the AI revolution clearly. That's not a shield—it's a vulnerability. While you're waiting for direction, someone else in your organization (or a competitor) is figuring out how to do your job better, faster, and more intelligently.

Remember Adam at the National Park Service? He didn't wait for a mandate to build his funding request tool. He identified a pain point, built a solution in 45 minutes, and started saving himself several days of labor… it’s only later that he ended up saving the organization thousands of days of labor annually.

The result wasn't just efficiency—it was leadership. Adam now gets invited to present to hundreds of colleagues. He's become a leader not because someone promoted him into a new “AI role,” but because he commissioned himself.

Your AI Self-Disruption Playbook

So how do you identify where to start? I use two frameworks:

The 5x5x5 Framework

An opportunity is worth building an AI assistant if:

You do it 5+ times per week, or
5+ other people also do it, or
AI can help you do it 5x faster or better

This simple framework helps you identify high-leverage tasks that can create ripple effects across your organization.

The "What Stinks?" Test

Ask yourself:

What tasks keep me from my "real job"?
What creates disproportionate friction in my day?
Where do I find myself thinking "there must be a better way…"?

Often the best opportunities aren't your core responsibilities but the administrative burdens keeping you from them. Tasks imposed by legal, HR, or reporting requirements typically make excellent candidates for AI augmentation.

Systematize Self-Disruption

Josh Wohle, founder and CEO of Mindstone, has this practice down to a science. Every Sunday, he reviews his previous week to identify repetitive tasks that could benefit from AI augmentation. Then, every Friday, he blocks two hours to build those augmentations.

One of his most valuable creations? An AI assistant that reviews email correspondences from bottom to top (to gain context), then evaluates his draft replies for alignment with his brand voice, conversation objectives, and potential missed opportunities. He credits this assistant with identifying opportunities worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that would have been missed in his busy schedule.

Eric Porres, Head of AI at Logitech, took a different approach to self-disruption. He built an AI assistant that summarizes the latest AI research and blog posts into a weekly personalized podcast that helps him understand emerging trends relevant to his role. Even as an AI leader, he's using AI to disrupt his own learning process.

I've done the same. My blog/newsletter creation process has been completely transformed by AI assistance (sneak preview: there’s a magazine article coming out about this later this summer…). I also used to painstakingly write handcrafted summary emails after advisory calls with executive coaching clients. Now I drop the transcript into an assistant trained on my summary style, and it drafts emails that need only minor tweaking.

These aren't theoretical use cases—they're real examples of professionals taking their own jobs before someone else does.

Making It Systematic

Self-disruption isn't a one-time event. It's a practice. Here's how to make it systematic:

Block Sunday Review Time: Following Josh's model, schedule 30-60 minutes every Sunday to review your previous week. Look specifically for tasks you performed multiple times or that caused disproportionate friction.
Block Friday Building Time: Schedule 1-2 hours every Friday to build AI assistants that address the opportunities you identified. Don't know how to build them? That's what AI is for. Ask it to help you build what you need. (Or reply to this email, and I’ll send you a video and a GPT)
Share Your Innovations: Identify colleagues who perform similar tasks and share your AI solutions. This doesn't just help others—it positions you as an innovator and leader.

The Exponential Opportunity

Individual productivity gains are valuable. Organizational transformation is exponential.

When Adam built his funding request tool, NPS AI Convener Cheryl Eckhardt shared it with hundreds of colleagues who might benefit, and watched the impact multiply from saving hundreds of hours, to thousands of days across the organization.

The leaders of tomorrow aren't waiting to be told to use AI—they're proactively figuring it out today and bringing others along.

Your Next Move

Open your calendar right now and block two recurring appointments:
- "AI Opportunity Review" (Sundays, 30 minutes)
- "AI Solution Building" (Fridays, 90 minutes)
For your first review, use the 5x5x5 Framework and What Stinks? test to identify three tasks you perform regularly that create friction.
For your first building session, focus on just one of those tasks. Use this prompt to get started: "I want to create an AI assistant that helps me with [task]. The current process takes me [time] and involves [steps]. How could AI help me streamline this?"
Share what you build with at least two colleagues who might benefit.

The question isn't whether your job will be disrupted by AI. The question is who will be doing the disrupting—you or someone else?

Choose disruption. Take your own job before someone else does.

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Jeremy Utley