So much mediocrity.

Much of the business world is built on mediocrity. I first talked about this in 2019. That’s exactly why there’s this rush toward AI right now.

If you actually had something valuable—something unique—something defensible—you’d just keep building it. You’d double down. But instead, lots of people quietly admit (without saying it out loud): “This is fine.”

Think about the bell curve of talent. Most of it? Dead center. Middle of the pack. Replaceable. Most companies don’t even want excellence. They just want good enough. And honestly, they’ve been struggling to hit “good enough” for years. So now, can you swipe a credit card and tell a robot to be “just fine”?

Whew, what a relief.

That’s cheap. Scalable. And for many business leaders, that’s all they ever aimed for.

Meanwhile, the truly exceptional stuff—the rare, the human, the actual original—gets rarer. But right now, we’re in the novel chaotic phase. Everyone’s sprinting to automate everything, not because it’s the future, but because they just found out it doesn’t really matter most of the time.