One of the most dangerous things a business owner can say is:
“We’re too busy.” I wrote about that earlier today because being busy often means strategic thinking gets pushed aside.

What’s interesting is that AI may be changing that equation.
I was talking with a business owner I coach who is one of the smartest people on earth. He has used AI to eliminate or dramatically reduce many of the administrative and financial tasks he used to handle himself.
He’s getting back 8–10 hours a week.

But here’s the interesting part.
He isn’t using those hours to do more work.
He’s using them to think.
– to identify friction points.
– to define ways to improve handoffs between teams.
– to solve operational problems that have existed for years.
– to question processes everyone else simply accepts.
And perhaps most importantly, to think about where his customers are headed and what they’ll need three years from now.

It made me wonder:
What happens when great thinkers get more time to think?
For decades, small businesses have hired people primarily to execute work.
But if AI continues reducing administrative and operational drag, perhaps the most valuable person in a company won’t be another administrator, coordinator, or project manager.

Maybe it will be one more critical thinker.

Someone whose job is to improve the work instead of doing the work.

The companies that figure this out first will have a significant advantage.
Not because they have better technology.
Because they have more people with the time and capacity to solve the problems that everyone else is too busy to address.

What do you think? Will AI make great thinkers exponentially more valuable?