Welcome back to Urelevant and here we are in the middle of a three-part series on the Wright Brothers, and specifically 15 principles that they mastered to succeed in accomplishing something untried and unknown - with parallels and lessons we can learn from them in approaching this new AI era that we are seeking clarity and direction on.
And if you havenât listened to the previous episode yet, I encourage you to start with the first episode in this 3-part series which is called âSkeptics in Kitty Hawkâ. In that episode, I shared the first 5 Wright Brothers Principles, which you can apply in your own flight into the unknown.
And so now letâs continue on with this episode, where Iâll dig into Wright Brothers Principles 6-10. And this episodeâs title of âDoubters in Daytonâ is a nod to the Wright Brothersâ hometown of Dayton, Ohio. Although their first flight took place roughly 700 miles from their hometown of Dayton, Ohio, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina for their first flight, the people back home remained relatively unimpressed for several years beyond the Wrights first flight. It wasnât until their accomplishments in flight swept the country of France by storm and ostensibly put Dayton on the map that their hometown suddenly ascended them to heroes status. In the next episode, called âFlight Fanatics in Franceâ we will finish this 3-part series with Wright Brothers Principles 11-15.
But here in this middle episode of Doubters in Dayton, we will explore that phenomenon of changing the world and no one seeming to care, much like a tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear or notice. And we will figure out how you can change your world and navigate this upcoming AI Pivot, which is eminently doable and manageable. And as one who has had to pivot multiple times in my own career, my goal is to help you to navigate this pivot with confidence instead of anxiety or fear. Be sure to also check out the first episode of Urelevant which is called My Pivot Story to learn more on how I have learned to pivot over the years and how you can too.
The Wright Brothers found themselves on a quest to create something that didnât yet exist. They had a vision of their high level goal of flying, but did not have the nuts and bolts plan on the ground all worked out. They had no blue prints or books to draw from.
There were no podcasts or courses or the Internet, nor any college degrees out there related to aeronautics. The Wright Brothers were the very definition and embodiment of what it is to be a Trailblazer, which is defined as a person who makes a new track through wild country.
And that is exactly the reason why I have elected to focus so much attention on the Wright Brothersâ blazing of their trail. It is because we find ourselves in the same predicament as them, although we are now 120 years removed from their breakthroughs.
We are each tasked with making a new track through the wild country of careers in this emerging AI era. There is much that is unknown and the paths are not yet clear, yet we must soldier on into the great unknown and blaze our individual trails - so looking at these principles helps us to apply lessons learned in our time and place.
And so there can actually be comfort in knowing Wright Brotherâs Principle 6
- They Were Not Experts.
The same can be said for us - none of us are AI experts. We are all at the ground floor, figuring out the up button of what I believe to be the start of the 4th Industrial Revolution.
The Wright Brothers were not experts when they started down their trail they blazed, but they became experts in the process. In those early days though, they were able to leverage their expertise in crafting a new path.
Over time, the paths will become well-worn, but during these early days, where the grass has not become well worn under the trampling onslaught of ideas put into practice, this is the truest definition of green field I have yet to see. And thatâs in the field of AI.
Now is the time to explore, experiment, and yes FAIL.
Here in the failure fulcrum is why the previous principle #5 is so important, which was Not Caring What Others Think. I spoke more in-depth on that principle in the previous episode, so you can dig into that deeper there.
Because the Wright Brothers were not experts, they could explore unbound by tradition or comparison. They did not have the luxury of assumptions, but could only test and verify, iterate and improve.
And make no mistake - despite popular opinion as evidenced by the multitude of self-proclaimed âexpertsâ, expertise cannot be faked.
Let me repeat that - expertise cannot be faked.
Expertise must be earned.
Taking the mantle of expertise as your own in areas that have not been earned is called theft.
And that theft of expertise that isnât earned through actual experience is the cause of imposter syndrome in many cases, always fearing that you will be exposed as a fraud before you are able to fake it til you make it.
The good news is that you donât have to be an expert or fake it til you make it. Remember, none of us are experts and this is a pretty level playing field. I have heard Gary Vaynerchuk recently advise embracing being an enthusiast rather than putting on airs as an expert in any area.
It is more than ok to be an enthusiast and for those early in their journey, this enables you to have great social currency in the lost art of authenticity - which is at a premium especially in the age of AI. Be real.
There are astonishingly few actual AI experts walking the globe, and they are too busy building the future to care if they are recognized as an expert.
The Wright Brothers became experts and that was done hands on. Get hands on with the tools and tech and improve those AI skills. The hard skills otherwise referred to as tech skills are still important to your skills stack, but rising in importance would be soft skills. These are being renamed as Durable Skills and AI is the perfect place to perfect your durable skills advantage!
In these experiments to gain experience, you may encounter happy accidents. Many breakthroughs sprang forth as a surprise byproduct of hard work and focused effort, far afield from the inventorâs original intent. Among accidental inventions are Penicillin, the Microwave Oven, Teflon, Velcro, Safety Glass, Post-It Notes and X-rays, to name a few.
You increase your odds of happy accidents, discoveries and inventions by purposing to improve your AI, Prompt Engineering and Durable Skills. These all go hand in hand.
Doing these things will improve your position out of the danger zone of irrelevance and increasing your odds of breakthroughs and discoveries and unique combinations to fly out of the fulcrum of failure to new heights in your personal development.
Now letâs move on to Wright Brothers Principle #7 - They Respected the Danger
Be mindful of the greater good lurking beyond the horizon of your own personal gain. In a few of words - aim higher, my friend.
It is ok to dream big.
The Wright Brothers fully recognized the inherent risks associated with flight - namely, what goes up - must come down.
They worked for years on gliders, perfecting steering, balance and equilibrium before daring to strap an engine to their creations.
Their tools were wind and lift and thrust and also importantly, ropes fixed at a certain length, attached to their glidersâ wing tips to make any unplanned descent survivable by setting governor limits on how high they could go.
They set limits on themselves and avoided unnecessary risks. Years later, once they developed a two-seater plane, they rarely if ever flew together, to reduce the risk of them both dying in a crash. Their work could live on, even in times of tragedy, which we will explore in the next episode.
But the application for the modern AI pivot is to take measured and calculated bets. You will want to avoid taking unnecessary high stakes risks, because if you place yourself in the position where failure is not an option, you will no longer be making sound decisions or working to play another day.
Thereâs an old pilotâs saying that a good day flying is when you get to go home to fly another day. There are times when flights are aborted due to conditions beyond our control, but we are playing the long game.
This is a marathon and not a sprint. So respect the danger to your career and take calculated risks and also recognize the dangers to others. As I said, you will want to look beyond the horizon of personal gain to the greater good. Think in terms of AI ethics.
I think a good rule of thumb for any AI practitioner can be found in the hippocratic oath - first do no harm. And to take that a step further, you will rise farther and faster if your event horizon is âwhat is in this for othersâ and not just âwhatâs in it for meâ.
Now on to Wright Brothers Principle #8 - They Made Do with What They Had
Resourcefulness is a defining trait of the innovative. Remember the trailblazer definition from earlier as one who makes a new track through wild country. Innovators donât stop working and say âif only I had this, that or the otherâ - they do flip if only to only if and recognize they will accomplish their goals only if they figure out how to make do with what they have.
Innovators build what they need and often invent several new things to scaffold their way to the prize or quest of the moment. They get things done. This was a defining characteristic of the Wright Brothers - they figured things out and got things done, and moved on to the next challenge. When problems emerge, as they always do, they got to work solving those problems and didnât pack it in.
One vivid example was when they needed to mend a canopy on their glider by sewing pieces of fabric together, yet they did not have a needle. So what did they do? They figured out a way to make a needle.
The progressive path is OVER, AROUND or THROUGH, but never in retreat or defeat.
For your own application, take stock of what you DO have, not what you DONâT HAVE.
Look for opportunities to accomplish multiple things at the same time with what you are often already doing or need to do. Look for actions that can have the most far reaching impacts and clear off several to-dos at once.
Think outside the box and get creative. The gatekeepers have been removed for the most part and anyone can create something new more quickly and easily than ever. The barrier to entry into the Creator Economy has been eradicated.
If you have a cell phone or computer, you have what you need to build out your own endeavors and test and experiment and gain experience.
The Wright Brothers also journaled - they recorded their progress daily and noted challenges faced and overcome. All of this they reflected upon and wrote about in their journals.
I am finding that I am journaling in a way, as I tap out or speak my ideas, dilemmas, frustrations or decisions to make into AI systems such as ChatGPT.
With each day comes new chats being filled in my history, serving as further links in my chain-of-thought prompts.
I am journaling my thinking and using AI to flesh out those thoughts into actions.
Now, taking a step back to assess my collection of inputs and received outputs along the way, I see a growing tapestry of ideas and inspirations that help me too in making do with what I have and being able to build what is needed as soon as those needs arise! What a time to be alive!
This gives me a repository of prompts in my personal prompt library to draw from, much like a seasoned developer with a large code base of utilities and apps to start from.
We are entering into this dawn of what I like to call Conversational Coding, using our Natural Language, to dictate what we need, leaving the minutia and mundane and complex to AI to prioritize, organize, and increasingly create on our behalf. This is the AI advantage that you shouldnât ignore.
Prior generations learned about putting money to work for themselves like workers in a field - this was explored by George S. Clason in his book, âRichest Man in Babylonâ.
We have the ability to create our own virtual AI workers to toil on our behalf and soon these AI agents and agentive devices will work for us all hours of the day and night. In large part, the playing field of the 4th Industrial Revolution has been leveled and anyone can now code, create art, create music or video, and the one key differentiator that you will want to be on the right side of is the ability to use AI adeptly. Your AI proficiency and Durable Skills will set you apart.
You have AI within your grasp, so you can surround yourself with a virtual board of directors and advisors. You are a prompt away from breaking down long meeting transcripts into prioritized lists of action items and project plans or charters. You can shore up your weak areas of lack and reduce the slack in your performance and productivity.
Thereâs thousands more advantages that you can realize through the effective use of AI in your life, home and career, and to get to the practical application as to how to unearth those thousands of advantages and realize them, we will need to now pivot to Wright Brothers Principle #9 - They Obsessed Over Increasing Lift and Thrust While Reducing Drag and Weight.
The four fundamental factors that affect flight are: lift, drag, thrust, and weight.
Here's a brief overview of each:
Lift: This is the upward force that counters gravity and enables an aircraft to rise off the ground. It is generated by the aircraft's wings and varies with the wing's shape, angle of attack, airspeed, and air density.
Drag: This is the resistance force caused by the aircraft moving through the air. It tends to slow the aircraft down and is affected by the aircraft's shape, size, and speed.
Thrust: This is the forward force produced by the aircraft's engines (like jet engines or propellers) that works to overcome drag and propels the aircraft forward through the air.
Weight: This is the downward force due to gravity on the aircraft. It includes the weight of the aircraft itself, plus fuel, passengers, and cargo. The aircraft's lift must counteract its weight for it to ascend.
The Wright Brothers were dissatisfied with their gliders performance in 1900 and 1901, so in the fall of 1901 they decided to ditch the math of supposed aeronautical experts of the time and figured out the true measurements of lift and drag by devising their own home grown wind tunnels. They tested a multitude of angles and surfaces by using a gasoline powered fan and models of various wing designs.
From September to December 1901, the Wright brothers conducted their wind tunnel tests. They put this data that they found through those tests to use when designing their 1902 aircraft, effectively solving the issues they'd run into during their 1900 and 1901 attempts. This same data also played a crucial role in the design of the propellers for their 1903 aircraft which took off successfully at Kitty Hawk North Carolina late that same year.
But what does lift, drag, thrust and weight have to do with AI today?
Letâs equate the four fundamental forces of flight to how you can enhance your productivity and performance in the context of AI. Letâs conceptualize an AI framework from the four fundamental forces of flight:
First we will explore Lift, which we can equate to Learning and Adaptability.
Just as lift in aviation enables an aircraft to rise and overcome the pull of gravity, continuous learning and adaptability provide the necessary uplift for you. This involves embracing new technologies, like AI, and adapting skills to leverage these tools effectively, propelling you upward.
Next, letâs move to Drag, which we can equate to Distractions and Resistance.
Drag can be likened to the various distractions and resistance to change that slow down progress. This includes outdated practices, reluctance to adopt new technologies, or inefficiencies in current workflows.
Minimizing drag involves streamlining processes and overcoming resistance to change, much like reducing aerodynamic drag to improve an aircraftâs efficiency. This can and should be done at the individual level, and not just be left to a corporate level decision maker.
So be sure youâre taking this to heart at the individual level and having full buy in and embracing AI so that you can reduce Drag in your own efforts of flying high with AI.
Now letâs move to Thrust, which we can equate to Drive and Motivation.
Thrust in a career context refers to the motivation and energy you put into your goals and tasks. Just like the engines propelling an aircraft, a strong drive to integrate and utilize AI tools, a focus on goals, and the energy to push through challenges can significantly boost productivity and performance.
Finally, letâs look at the fourth fundamental force of flight which is Weight. You can equate Weight to Workload and Responsibilities.
In the flight analogy, weight represents the load the aircraft must carry and manage effectively to stay airborne. In a job setting, managing your workload and responsibilities efficiently ensures that they do not become overwhelming. Balancing tasks with the aid of AI can help you lift the weight, allowing for more strategic focus and less manual burden.
In the age of AI, leveraging these fundamental four forces of flight means aligning personal and professional development with technological advancements, reducing inefficiencies, maintaining strong motivation, and managing responsibilities effectively. This approach can dramatically enhance your productivity and performance. And realize that your biggest breakthroughs may come in small form incremental advantages and improvements over time.
And now letâs move on to Wright Brothers Principle #10 - They did not quit.
The brothers are remembered as the fathers of flight because they did not quit in the storm of relentless challenges. I explored in the previous episode when we discussed the first principle that they didnât know better, or didnât know what they didnât know.
If they had known all of the challenges they would face, would they do it all over again? I canât answer that question definitively, but I do know that they didnât quit, even when the outcome was unknown at the time.
There is a certain amount of grit that is needed to accomplish anything great. And the good news is that we all have a big step up towards greatness with the help of artificial intelligence.
Often we give up in difficult pursuits because we donât see a way through. You can leverage ai to come up with innovative ideas and solutions to problems. We all now have an abundant team of experts that we can craft to our current need through what is known as persona prompting.
What this looks like is to craft prompts where you instruct an AI, whether that be ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or some other generative AI tool, to act as a certain persona.
For example, letâs say you are trying to come up with a new marketing campaign for your local business. You can prompt something along the lines of âact as a marketing expert to help build brand awareness for my mortgage company, or plumbing business, or book store or coffee shop, or whatever it may be.
When you canât seem to make a dent with your best efforts, you can now leverage a virtual army of specialists to help you. I alluded to this in the previous principle when I surfaced the idea of crafting a virtual board of directors or advisors.
You can train your own custom GPTs or in essence AI apps that are just for you, and trained on your specific data and use cases. This can be an invaluable tool whether you are trying to build your own personal brand, launch a business, or pivot in your career. You can create these apps through natural language and conversational design and coding so that you are in essence cloning yourself or creating in basically a tiered system of personal support for yourself. Think of this as your own personalized Center of Excellence, there to serve you and advance your goals.
This would be similar to whenever you may have called into a call center and had an issue that needed to be escalated to a specialist. You can have a tiered or prioritized workflow where you can now offload that which isnât important or interesting to your custom built GPTs or ai agents to take care of that which doesnât float your boat, if you will.
This freed up time and less mental drain can and will inspire you to better ideas and creativity and can lessen the blunt force trauma of time wasting activities that youâd rather not do, and the challenges you may face on the way to where you are ultimately trying to head.
Much like in flight, you will find times of personal friction or drag, and various oppositions weighing you down. With the advantage of AI you can throw off the ballast hindering your flight to relevance and one of the keys to not quitting is to recognize that there are always options. There are no dead ends. So learn to do persona prompting and also ideation prompts - feeding in your parameters, problems and challenges and brainstorm with AI.
You can use AI to get inside the minds of decision makers and gate keepers who are getting in the way of your progress and you can write and speak more persuasively to accomplish your goals.
And remember to keep your event horizon on the greater good - always being mindful of what is in it for them and not just yourself - finding those win/win situations is made easier with AI, so donât you dare quit. Grit Over quit!
So thatâs a wrap on this episode, where we have explored Wright Brothers Principles 6-10 which were:
#6 - They were not experts. No one is an AI expert yet!
#7 - They respected the danger.
#8 - They made do with what they had.
#9 - They obsessed over increasing lift and thrust while reducing drag and weight.
#10 They did not quit.
We will conclude this three episode series in the next episode entitled âFlight Fanatics in Franceâ where we will learn Wright Brothers Principles #11 - #15.
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Thank you for joining us here on Urelevant!
