Chill Labs is a boutique consultancy helping companies think strategically, solve business problems, and streamline operations utilizing Product Management, Software Engineering principles and AI. Combining a decade of experience running complex, globally distributed software products with expertise in product discovery, user research, and strategy, Chill Labs helps companies build products that users want and do so in a way that supports growth and scale. Dina Levitan, Founder and Principal at Chill Labs, based out of Seattle, WA, brings over 15 years of experience as a product and technical leader ranging from startups to companies like Google.
The inner game is the moat
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Hi Reader, I've been noticing something in client conversations this past month. The people who are most anxious about AI are the ones with the most knowledge. Senior operators, experienced PMs, accomplished consultants. They know their domain deeply, and they're watching AI get better at knowing it too. The people who seem least anxious aren't focused on knowing more. They're focused on how they show up when it's hard. What got me thinking Joe Hudson - an executive coach who coaches leaders at a frontier AI lab - wrote a guest piece in Lenny's Newsletter recently that I've been chewing on. His argument: when AI commoditizes knowledge and effort, the thing that becomes scarce is what he calls the "inner game." Emotional clarity. The ability to stay grounded when you're in conflict. The willingness to fail and learn from it - not shut down, not double down, just update. He's an exec coach, so he's not talking about AI features. He's talking about what's left when the cognitive heavy lifting gets handed off - and that leftover piece is the hard part of the work. I'd put it this way: your expertise was never really about the knowledge. It was about the things underneath it. Your read on a conversation when the energy changes. Your confidence holding a position when you're getting pushback. Your willingness to say what's true even when it's inconvenient. AI can do a lot. It can't do that. What I keep seeing with practitioners The people doing well aren't the ones with the most sophisticated setups. They're the ones who trust their own perspective enough to put it on the table. Who walk into a client conversation knowing what they think, and don't need a tool to validate it before they say it. The perspective is what they're actually paying for, and the tools just get you there faster. Life beyond the screen I've been watching my kids learn stuff lately. The thing that helps them most is pretty simple: when they get something wrong, they can just try again without shutting down. How much they already know matters way less than that. I'm not sure that's different from what Joe's describing for adults. Knowing a lot isn't the moat. Staying open is. A question for this week: What's one thing you know to be true in your domain that you'd stake a claim on publicly - even if it's not the consensus view? Work with me directly. If you want a thinking partner on your product strategy, AI rollout, or building your fractional practice - here's how I work with people: https://gamma.app/docs/Chill-Labs-Coaching-Information-ifjuyb0hjgw9xtb Come to the Water Cooler 🚰 I host a free monthly gathering for people building fractional and independent practices - honest conversations on positioning, pricing, and pipeline, plus recaps when you can't make it. Join here: https://chillaborate.com/fractional-water-cooler Let's Chillaborate, Dina Founder, Chill Labs PS: This is basically the whole throughline of the Automate Yourself podcast - the tools keep changing, the person using them is the point. New here? Start anywhere: https://chillaborate.com/podcast 💙 |
Chill Labs
Chill Labs is a boutique consultancy helping companies think strategically, solve business problems, and streamline operations utilizing Product Management, Software Engineering principles and AI. Combining a decade of experience running complex, globally distributed software products with expertise in product discovery, user research, and strategy, Chill Labs helps companies build products that users want and do so in a way that supports growth and scale. Dina Levitan, Founder and Principal at Chill Labs, based out of Seattle, WA, brings over 15 years of experience as a product and technical leader ranging from startups to companies like Google.
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