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Pencils Down
Designing how to bring AI to your team.
Jaime Solis
13 Jun
Welcome to Red Threads
It’s Friday and welcome to Red Threads–your insider guide to strategies and tools at the intersection of music, podcasting, marketing, AI, and culture.
“The most important question we can ask is not ‘How do we do it?’ but ‘Why are we doing it?’”
– Peter Block
Today we’re using a conversation with middle school educators to talk a bit about Design Thinking and how to effectively bring AI to your team.
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⏰ 5-Second Summary
The Red Thread — Why “What’s it for?” is the most important leadership question in the age of AI
The Unlock — A 4-step framework for integrating AI into your team or org without losing the plot
The Leadership Edge — 3 key questions to align people before deploying new tools
Prompt Playground — Build your AI Manifesto using a fill-in-the-blank strategy prompt
Industry Pulse — AI music labels, YouTube’s $55B impact, Coca-Cola’s record label, and Google’s traffic cliff
Trending AI Tools — Music video creators, knowledge coaches, band name generators, and more
Open Opportunities — Senior roles at NPR, Podglomerate, Downtown Music Holdings, and more
⏳Estimated read time: ~7 minutes
The Red Thread This Week
What’s it for?
That’s the question every leader should constantly be asking, especially when introducing new technology.
This week, I sat with a group of middle school educators; smart, committed professionals who are feeling burned out, boxed in, and being told two conflicting things at once:
“Stop students from using AI to outsource their thinking.”
“Use AI to be more productive in your work.”
They’re exhausted. But it’s not because they’re stubborn, or bad teachers.
It’s because they’re operating in a system where nobody can agree what the work is even for anymore.
Is it to get kids into college?
To improve standardized test scores?
To make sure no one throws a chair through a window?
And they’re not alone.
Corporate leaders face the same paradox every day; mandated to integrate AI, but unclear on what success looks like, or how to define the role of this new technology inside very human systems.
If we don’t align on the purpose of our work, no amount of tech will fix it. In fact, it might accelerate the chaos.
So the Red Thread this week blends two themes:
A "What's it for?" design mindset for purpose-driven leadership.
A step-by-step checklist for introducing AI to your team in a way that aligns with your values, not just your KPIs.
Whether you're a teacher, CEO, or community builder, it’s not enough to simply use new tools.
You have to ask what you’re building with them, and why you’re building it in the first place.
Let’s dive in.
~ Jaime
🔑 The Unlock
How to Lead with AI Without Losing the Plot
If you're tasked with “bring AI into your team,” don’t start with tools, start with purpose.
Use this quick framework:
1️⃣ Declare Your Objectives
What is our work for? Who are we serving? What do we need in order to deliver?
Education isn’t for compliance. Business isn’t for press releases. If AI doesn’t make you more human, more connected, or more effective at your mission—why use it?
2️⃣ Build Your AI Executive Team
AI initiatives fail when “everyone owns it.”
Create three clear roles:
Executive Sponsor: champions the strategic vision
CTO or Tech Lead: integrates tools securely
Team Lead: identifies use cases, tracks success, socializes wins and fails
3️⃣ Write Down Your AI Manifesto
AI without values is a liability.
Write down your team's shared point of view:
What do we want AI to do for us?
What boundaries won’t we cross?
How will we measure success beyond efficiency?
4️⃣ Equip the Ready
Aim for 10% of your workforce to become AI proficient.
Run lightweight assessments. Identify skeptics and early adopters. Offer opt-in coaching before mandating use.
📌 Tip: Don’t let the tool hijack the craft. Use AI to free up time for the human parts of your job that are not easily replicated.
💡 Leadership Edge
Important Questions You Can Ask Right Now
If you’re leading a team, department, classroom, or company—don’t rush to deploy AI.
Start by making space for this conversation:
“What’s our work for right now?”
“Who is it serving?”
“How will we know we’re succeeding?”
Ask it often. Ask it in public. Ask it together.
Because much of what we call “resistance to change” is actually confusion about purpose.
People don’t reject AI because it’s scary.
They reject it because no one’s explained how it helps them do their best work, even better.
📌 Remember: As a leader in the age of AI, your job isn’t to force adoption. It’s to create alignment around a future people actually want to work toward.
🎲 Prompt Playground
Test drive AI Today with This Week’s Challenge
Write Your AI Manifesto
If you lead a team—or want to become the kind of person who should—you need an answer to these questions:
How do we use AI effectively around here?
What does “effective” even look like?
This week's prompt challenges you to build your AI Manifesto. A clear, personal, and professional guide for managing (not outsourcing to) AI in your work.
Copy + paste the prompt below into ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity, fill in the blanks, and see what happens!
Prompt:
You are a leadership strategist and organizational culture coach. I want you to help me create a simple “AI Manifesto” for our team so we can integrate AI in a way that is aligned with our values and goals.
Here’s some information about our organization:
Industry or sector: [e.g. Public Education, SaaS, Nonprofit Media]
Primary goal of our work: [e.g. Empowering students, Supporting creators, Serving clients with HR needs]
Current AI skill level of our team: [e.g. Beginner, Mixed, Advanced]
Top 3 values we want AI to support or amplify: [e.g. Curiosity, Efficiency, Equity]
Key concerns or risks we want to avoid: [e.g. Replacing human touch, Privacy breaches, Wasted time on hype tools]
Using that input, create a one-page AI Manifesto that includes:
A clear statement of purpose (“Why we’re using AI”)
A list of what we want AI to help us do more of
A list of boundaries or “red lines” we won’t cross
An example use case that embodies our vision
A short paragraph we can share with stakeholders to explain our AI philosophy
Make it readable, inspiring, and practical.
✅ Try it with:
Industry: K–12 public education
Primary goal: Helping students become better thinkers and “dot connectors.”
Team skill level: Beginner
Values: Curiosity, Inclusion, Safety, Resilience
Risks to avoid: Privacy breaches, Shortcutting learning, Equity gaps
📣 Bonus! Ask AI to generate a companion “AI onboarding guide” to help new team members learn and apply this manifesto.
Reply to this email and send me your favorite result! I’ll send you my free AI prompting guide to help you unlock even more fun and productivity.
📡 Industry Pulse
Timbaland launches AI music label
Superproducer Timbaland debuts Stage Zero, a new AI-powered music company, unveiling its first AI-generated artist, TAI-TA.
Read more ›Google’s AI answers eat search traffic
Media sites are reporting steep declines in search referrals as Google’s new AI-generated answers replace clicks with summaries.
Read more ›YouTube’s economic impact hits $55B+ in the U.S.
A new YouTube report claims the creator economy contributed $55 billion to U.S. GDP in 2024 and supported 490,000+ jobs.
Read more ›Spotify takes off with United Airlines
Spotify signs an in-flight entertainment deal with United, bringing curated audio content to passengers worldwide.
Read more ›YouTube isn’t dominating podcasting—yet
New data shows YouTube lags behind Spotify and Apple in overall podcast consumption, despite rising popularity for video-first shows.
Read more ›
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
ElevenLabs v3 – SOTA text-to-speech model with support for 70+ languages.
Freebeat.ai – Instantly generate music videos based using your own songs.
Clockwise – Smart calendar assistant that protects focus time and automates scheduling.
Portraits by Google – New Google Labs experiment using AI coaches to deliver expert knowledge.
Band Name Generator – Describe your vibe, get AI-powered band names in seconds.
💼 Open Opportunities
📌 Know someone looking? Forward this to them!
⚡ Final Note
Want more Red Threads in your life?
You’ve got an idea. A message. A story worth telling. The only thing standing between you and your own podcast? Getting started.
That’s why I put together The 7-Day Podcast Challenge—a simple, step-by-step guide to getting your podcast live in a week. No fluff, no wasted motion. Just a clear path from idea to launch.
And thank you for spending time with Red Threads this week. I’m glad you’re here.
~ Jaime
P.S. My weekly Red Threads newsletter goes out every Friday. Move my emails to your primary inbox so you see the next edition!
P.P.S. Could you use some help with a project you’re working on? Let’s talk!
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