In a book on entrepreneurship I read last year, the author makes a distinction between working in the business and working on the business. We often view ourselves as the expert and hence have a tendency to work in the business, doing the work of delivering value to customers. The point of the author is that entrepreneurs need to work on the business, which includes standardizing ways of working, hiring the right people, automating tasks and so on. With the advent of AI agents, many of us need to shift from working in the business to working on the business and creating, developing and training AI agents to do the work that we used to do ourselves. And then, similar to how we feel about our kids, be proud when the AI agent does the job better than what we ever could! So, where are you working?
reflection