A recent article from The Verge stated that Americans trust Amazon about as much as they trust their bank. Companies like #GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple) were born in the age of software and the internet. The people running these organizations were technology visionaries and experts. Initially, #GAFA didn’t seem to pose much of a threat to the traditional financial institutions. How could a company that builds cool music devices called iPods impact a bank? How could a company that helps people find things on the internet hurt the financial institutions storing consumers money?

I had asked a colleague for feedback on a presentation he listened in on. Instead of saying “That was great Jordan,” my colleague said, “I’d give you a B+ or A-. You’re good, but you can be better.”

The purpose of this article and future articles on leadership is to give practical advice that comes from good research intertwined with a few of my own experiences. These will not be fluffy articles, but I will try to use stories as often as possible to help you retain the information you’re learning here. In my opinion, the best leadership advice enables you to go from a high level vision to real life application. High level concept quotes will be shared when they can be used to help guide us to greater understanding, not just to provide you with false reassurance.

If you’re like me you probably enjoy hearing the "looks great!" part of this feedback, but you needed something different. You needed feedback that makes you re-think your premise, or gives you insights into points you left out that could strengthen your position. You needed someone to ask questions you had not considered. 

If we want to avoid a future where people are being replaced by robots we need to start giving ourselves more strategic time now. We need to get better at putting our strategic time to good use. Not tomorrow, right now. The future of robots or computers taking jobs is already here. The greater difficulty in front of us today is learning how to take advantage of the time savings that robots give us. I don't think this means more time at the beach!