Path 2 of 5

I lead a team. Now AI is in the room.

The tools are new, but the job hasn’t changed. You still help your people see the situation clearly, and then you decide together.

A two-minute read
One thing to try this week
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What’s true

More information. The same responsibility.

AI can put more information in front of your team, and faster, than any tool before it. What it can’t tell you is who in the room disagrees but isn’t saying so, or what a decision will cost the people who have to carry it out. Finding that out is still your job, and so is the decision.

That gap, between what the information shows and what your people actually think, is where Stuart works now. WethosAI, the company he co-founded and leads as CEO, describes its aim as helping teams bring human alignment into the decisions that matter.

One check this week

A 15-minute pre-mortem.

Before your team commits to its next big decision, set aside fifteen minutes for a pre-mortem. Instead of asking whether the plan will work, you imagine it has already failed and ask why.
Ask the group: “It’s three months from now and this failed. Why?” Have everyone write down their own answer before anyone speaks, so the first voice in the room doesn’t shape what everyone else says.
Read the answers out loud. If the same reason comes up more than once, fix it before you commit to the decision.

It works because it gives the quieter people on your team a safe way to say what they’re seeing, while there’s still time to do something about it.

Takes 15 minutes, once

In Stuart’s words

“Data doesn’t make decisions. People do.”
Stuart McClure · (un)Lonely at the Top · 17 August 2026

Next step

The story · Chapter V

One decision, human first

A four-step exercise on the home page. You write down one real decision, ask the AI tool you already use for options and people you might have missed, check what it can’t know, and then make the call yourself.

Weekly letter

(un)Lonely at the Top

Stuart’s weekly letter on Substack about how leaders make decisions under pressure.

On wethos.ai

Try Stu’s Twin

An AI model of how Stuart thinks, built and run by WethosAI. Bring it a hard decision you’re weighing. Its answers come from the model, not from Stuart himself.