Why I Don’t Start with AI Anymore
Over the past year, nearly every meeting I walked into started with a question about technology.
“What AI tool should we use?”
Today, the conversations sound different.
They’re about exhausted teams.
Overloaded teachers.
Nonprofits trying to serve more people with the same resources.
Boards struggling to think strategically instead of operationally.
Leaders searching for time they no longer seem to have.
The questions have changed because we’ve begun to realize something important.
AI was never the real conversation.
Leadership is.
Over the past year, I’ve worked with Jewish schools, synagogues, foundations, nonprofits, and businesses. While every organization is different, they all share one challenge:
how do we create more capacity without losing what makes us human?
That’s a leadership question long before it’s a technology question.
Too often, organizations begin with software.
I prefer to begin with purpose.
What are we trying to accomplish?
Where are our people overwhelmed?
What work creates the greatest value?
Where are relationships suffering because administrative work has consumed the day?
Only after answering those questions do we talk about AI.
Sometimes AI becomes the right answer.
Sometimes improving a process accomplishes more than introducing a new tool.
Sometimes clearer priorities solve the problem entirely.
Technology should never become the destination.
It should help us reach the destination we’ve already chosen.
This feels especially important within Jewish communal life.
Our schools don’t exist to become more technologically advanced.
They exist to educate children.
Our synagogues don’t exist to automate every interaction.
They exist to build community.
Our nonprofits don’t exist to maximize efficiency for its own sake.
They exist to strengthen lives.
If technology helps us do those things better, we should embrace it.
If it distracts us from those purposes, we should question it.
The greatest opportunity AI presents isn’t simply doing work faster.
It’s giving us the opportunity to decide what deserves more of our attention.
Imagine if a school administrator reclaimed five hours each week.
Not to answer more email.
But to spend more time with teachers.
Imagine if a synagogue executive director spent less time assembling reports and more time connecting with congregants.
Imagine if a nonprofit CEO had the space to think strategically instead of constantly reacting.
That isn’t just efficiency.
It’s capacity.
And capacity creates possibility.
Perhaps that’s why I no longer begin with AI.
I begin by asking what kind of organization we hope to become.
Because the future won’t belong to the organizations using the most artificial intelligence.
It will belong to the organizations using their newly created human capacity most wisely.
Technology may change rapidly.
That responsibility never will.
