Team Kibi Anderson

Somewhere along the way, we decided adulthood meant giving up summer camp.

We stopped gathering simply because it was fun. 🎢
We stopped making things with our hands.
We stopped laughing in the middle of the day.
We stopped giving ourselves permission to pause unless we'd "earned" it.

And somehow...

Exhaustion became a badge of honor.

I don't think we were designed to live this way.

So this summer, I'm creating something I've wanted to build for a long time.

🏕️ Rested Rebel Summer Camp

Not another leadership workshop.

Not another webinar.

Just a series of Campfire Conversations where leaders can pause, reconnect, and remember what matters.

Throughout the summer, we'll explore the hidden causes of exhaustion, and the unexpected paths back to ourselves.

We'll talk about laughter.
Creativity.
Women's health.
Travel.
Beauty.
Chronobiology.
Caregiving.
Leadership.

Because burnout isn't caused by just one thing.

Neither is recovery.

We begin on July 7 with one of my dearest friends, Aida Rodriguez.

Most people know Aida as a comedian.

I know her as someone who's reminded me, time and again, that laughter isn't just entertainment.

Sometimes it's survival.

Sometimes it's healing.

And sometimes it's exactly what helps us find our way back to ourselves.

If you're craving a different kind of summer...

Pull up a chair.

🔥 We saved you a seat by the fire.

Register through the link in my bio (or the comments) and join us for one conversation—or stay all summer.

AI is becoming another item on an already impossible to-do list.

A CEO said that to me recently, and honestly, I've been hearing versions of that frustration from leaders across industries.

She's not anti-AI. Actually, it's quite the opposite. She understands exactly why it matters.

Her frustration was simpler. She's already leading through uncertainty, managing budget pressure, making difficult decisions, responding to stakeholders, and trying to keep people engaged through constant change.

Now there's another expectation sitting on her desk: Become conversant in AI and help the organization figure out what to do with it.

What struck me wasn't the technology conversation. It was the leadership conversation hiding underneath it.

Most organizations aren't asking, "What can we remove to make room for this?" They're asking leaders to absorb one more thing.

We keep talking about AI readiness. But most leaders I work with aren't wondering whether they can learn another tool. They're trying to figure out where their attention belongs.

What should they keep doing?

What should they automate?

And what remains uniquely human no matter how powerful the technology becomes?

The leaders I'm talking to aren't resisting AI. They're trying to understand what will continue to make them valuable as the workplace changes around them.

What are you seeing? Is AI creating capacity in your organization, or is it becoming another item on an already impossible to-do list?

P.S. On July 1, I'm hosting an Executive Roundtable called
💡 The AI Relevance Gap 💡 . We'll explore a question many leaders are quietly wrestling with: What makes leaders valuable when access to information is no longer the differentiator?

👉🏾 Comment "AI" and I'll send details.

I thought AI was making my new team member worse at her job. It turns out I was so wrong.

For the last few months, I've been training someone new on my team. She's talented, really thoughtful, and fully capable. Yet I kept finding myself frustrated.

I would explain something and she'd tell me she understood. But then a week later, the work would come back and we'd somehow be having the same conversation again.

At first, I caught myself thinking: "Why isn't this clicking?" Then I noticed something. Whenever I asked her to think through a problem, she'd often use AI to help generate a response.

The responses sounded good, sometimes really good, but again the behavior wasn't changing. That's when I realized I was asking the wrong question.

The issue wasn't whether AI was helping her think. The issue was whether I had actually taught her enough context to think well in the first place.

So I stopped assigning tasks, and started mapping the system.

I walked her through why things mattered.
How decisions connected.
What happened upstream.
What happened downstream.

And almost immediately, the quality of her judgment improved and I realized it's not because we used less AI. In fact I used it more to help me make this adjustment. The improvement happened because I had finally taken time to make sure she finally understood the environment the work lived inside.

That experience has me wondering how many leaders are looking at what appears to be an AI problem when it's actually an alignment problem, or a training problem, or a communication problem.

AI didn't create the gap. It exposed it.

When people can generate answers in seconds, it becomes much harder to hide when they don't fully understand the question.

The organizations navigating AI best aren't necessarily teaching better prompts. They're making sure people understand the context behind the work.

And that's a very different leadership challenge.

Comment RELEVANT and I'll send you my AI Leadership Relevance Check.