AI After 50 - Episode #9 - AI Leadership: 3 Skills That Will Set You Apart
AI After 50 — Episode #9 - "Three Skills That Will Set You Apart as an AI Leader"
Show Notes
"Three Skills That Will Set You Apart as an AI Leader"
Episode Number: 9
Recorded: Saturday, March 14, 2026
Hosts: Mark Tennant & John Paganini
Episode Summary:
What separates a leader who talks about AI from one who actually leads it inside their organization? In Episode 9, Mark and John break down the three skills every leader needs to develop right now — starting with where John just spent the week: the HIMSS National Conference in Las Vegas, where 24,000 healthcare IT professionals gathered and AI governance, patient outcomes, and human-centered AI were the dominant themes.
From the conference floor to your desk, this episode gives you the practical starting points: what to learn first, what to understand about AI capabilities, and how to move from basic use to real organizational impact.
Key Takeaways:
1. AI is already in your organization — with or without a strategy. According to a 2026 AMA poll, 81% of US physicians report using AI. A Gallup poll shows nearly 50% of public sector employees use it regularly. Your people are using these tools now. The question is whether leadership is guiding that or not.
2. AI literacy is the foundation — but fluency is the goal. Understanding how to use a tool is the mechanics. Knowing how AI can support human judgment and act as a thought partner is where the real value lives.
3. Most people dramatically underestimate what these models can do. The capabilities have advanced far beyond writing emails. Deep research, agentic workflows, multi-step automation — leaders who understand this have a real competitive edge.
4. The human in the loop is non-negotiable. From the HIMSS conference floor to your boardroom: the message resonating across industries is that AI amplifies human judgment — it does not replace it.
The Three Skills:
Skill 1 — AI Literacy: Make It Priority Number One
Start here. Understand what AI can do at a foundational level. Host lunch-and-learns. Identify your internal AI champions. Give people tools — and the training to go with them. Organizations that deploy tools without training find no value. Literacy across the organization, led from the top, is the foundation everything else is built on.
Skill 2 — Understand What These Models Are Actually Capable Of
Most people think AI is a glorified Google search or an email writing tool. It is far more than that. Large language models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) can conduct deep research, build workflows, analyze complex documents, and increasingly — through agentic AI — manage multi-step processes in the background without constant human direction. Leaders who understand the real capability landscape make better decisions about where and how to deploy AI.
Skill 3 — Advanced AI Literacy: Use Cases and What's Worked
Once you understand the basics, start mapping AI capabilities to real business problems. Onboarding. Training. Sales and marketing. Operations. Find out what's worked in other organizations and apply it to yours. Move beyond random prompts toward intentional, structured use. This is where AI literacy becomes organizational value.
From the HIMSS Conference — John's Highlights
* 160,000 global HIMSS members; approximately 24,000 attended the conference with hundreds of vendors
* AI governance, patient outcomes, and ethical AI were dominant themes
* Strong consensus: AI must have a human in the loop at all stages — especially in clinical settings
* "This is the year of the patient" — patients now have direct access to AI tools to monitor and manage their own health, with smart devices feeding real-time data into clinical conversations
* 81% of US physicians are now using AI (2026 AMA Physician Survey on Augmented Intelligence) — primarily for note summarization, medical research, discharge instructions, billing codes, and chart documentation
Tool Spotlight: NotebookLM
Google's NotebookLM was discussed as a standout tool for organizing and synthesizing conference materials. Key points:
* Free to use at notebooklm.google.com — full access included with Google Workspace accounts
* You feed it your own documents, PDFs, and research; it answers questions and creates outputs only from those sources
* Reduces hallucination significantly because it works from what you give it
* Outputs include: summaries, podcasts, mind maps, infographics, PowerPoint slides, and (new) video
* As AI models improve over time, NotebookLM improves with them — your existing projects become more powerful automatically
John's use case from HIMSS: Fed conference session PDFs into NotebookLM, then used it to summarize, organize, and synthesize five days of content into usable insights.
Your One Move This Week
Pick one AI platform. ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, or Claude and commit to it for six weeks. Pay for the full version ($20/month). Use it every day. Break it. Build with it. Make it part of your daily workflow. That firsthand experience is what turns AI literacy into AI fluency, and it's what makes you credible when you bring it into your organization.
Coming Up Next
Episode #10: Which AI platform is right for your organization? Mark and John will highlight the major platforms, what each one does best, and how to make the right choice for your specific needs.
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⚠️ HUMAN IN THE LOOP: Reviewed for accuracy before publishing. AI After 50 | Episode 9 | Show Notes | March 2026
