Thought Partners S3 E4: More Creative, or Just Quicker?

Is AI making us more creative, or just quicker? Dr. Lynn Austin, educator, author, and fresh DBA whose research looks at how organizations get their people ready for AI, joins Ed and Paul to talk about where AI helps, where it hurts, and why the question that matters most is "what problem am I trying to solve?" Along the way: a rescued dog who taught her to be human, a seventh-grade rap, an AI staff named Chatty, Sir Claude-a-lot, and Jimmy, and the line Ed called the quote of the episode.

Bring us the next question. Join the Thought Partners Discord and tell us how AI is changing your creative work, or who we should talk to next.

👉 https://discord.gg/5CU3xW4AD

We're on X now too: @ThoughtPtnrsPod

Timestamps
00:05 Welcome, and Dr. Lynn Austin
00:54 Ed's warm-up: when did AI first surprise you?
02:14 The Newman Tales: one hour for the dog, six hours for her
05:14 "I wonder if" and the seventh-grade rap
11:28 All words are made up; connection; Newman rescued me
16:01 Vision boards, the doctorate, and a prayer and a nap
22:58 Her research: companies "invest in the word AI"
29:09 "We bought everyone a Copilot license. Now what?"
32:17 Middle managers caught in the middle
35:13 Ed's four weeks of AI
36:54 Transparent leaders and room for R&D
40:30 Will AI take my job?
46:31 Agents on strike: Chatty, Sir Claude-a-lot, and Jimmy
53:42 More creative, or just quicker?
56:54 What does Newman think about AI? Find your lane
59:52 Creativity five years from now
63:01 What doesn't change, and "2025 is historical"
66:35 Where to find Lynn

Try this week
- Before you pick an AI tool, write down the problem you want it to solve. If you can't, start there.
- Ask "I wonder if" about one thing you do the same way every week.
- Get a second opinion from a different AI on something that matters, and see where they disagree.
- Stuck? Step away. Lynn's version is a prayer and a nap. Ed calls it letting your bio intelligence catch up.

From the episode
- "Creativity looks like an opportunity to solve a new problem." Dr. Lynn Austin
- "AI is not going to take all jobs, but it is going to impact those who don't know AI."
- Lynn's AI readiness assessment is on her site (link below).

Our guest

Dr. Lynn Austin is an educator and researcher whose doctoral study looked at strategic workforce readiness for AI: how organizations adopt and implement it, starting with people, not tools. She has taught from seventh-grade English to higher education, writes a weekly blog on AI in higher education, and is the author of The Newman Tales, stories about her dog Newman, who was rescued from the meat trade in Taiwan.

- Website and AI readiness assessment: lynnfaustin.com

- The Newman Tales: on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube

Coming up

New episodes every Tuesday. Next week, November 3: Episode 5 with Ryan and John.

Hosts
Ed Buchanan & Paul Tonden

Music: "Momentum," original Thought Partners theme.

Thought Partners S3 E3: Risk, Riskier, Riskiest

How do you feel about risk, and when is a risk worth taking? Ed and Paul take on a two-part question from Beth Ardner in the Thought Partners Discord. They start out wary of the word, find the risk hiding in staying put, and land somewhere more useful: you can't avoid risk, so name it, sort it, and ask what happens if it works.

**Bring us the next question.** Join the Thought Partners Discord, add a question about change, or tell us about a risk that turned out to be worth it.
👉 https://discord.gg/5CU3xW4AD

We're on X now too: @ThoughtPtnrsPod (https://x.com/ThoughtPtnrsPod)

Timestamps
00:05 Welcome, and Beth's question from the Discord
02:48 Gut reaction: risk-averse
04:40 "A situation involving exposure to danger"
07:56 The risk you choose and the risk chosen for you
08:53 The risk Ed didn't choose
10:31 The risk of staying put
15:32 Comfortable, settled, stagnant
20:54 Name the risk before you decide
25:13 We take risks every day
28:29 Risk is change's partner
29:24 Safety, and when accidents happen
32:06 The board game Risk
36:15 What board games teach us
39:51 What if it works?
43:33 Letting go of the trapeze
44:51 When is a risk worth taking?
46:14 The risk of never trying
47:26 What to try this week
51:07 Risk, riskier, riskiest
52:17 Wrap

Try this week
- Notice your first reaction to a risk, then question it. Is it true, false, or do you not know yet?
- Ask "What if this does work?" as seriously as "What if it doesn't?"
- Name your risks and sort them: risky, riskier, riskiest.
- Look for the steps between either and or. It's rarely a straight choice between two things.

From the episode
- Who invented Risk? We asked you to look it up in the Discord, so here's the answer: French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse created it in 1957 as *La Conquête du Monde*, and Parker Brothers brought it to the US. Monopoly's story belongs to Lizzie Magie and *The Landlord's Game*.- Paul's quote: "Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good." Marcus Aurelius, *Meditations* 4.17.
- The trapeze callback is from Episode 2, "The Messy Middle," with Kyle Nelson and Deb Peters.

Thanks
To Beth Ardner for the question, and to everyone who upvoted it.

Hosts
Ed Buchanan & Paul Tonden

Music: "Momentum," original Thought Partners theme.

Thought Partners S3 E2 — The Messy Middle

For the show's first four-person episode, Ed and Paul bring in a pair of thought partners: Kyle Nelson and Deb Peters, the change-management practitioners and neurodivergence coaches behind Spark and Aim. Together they rumble with the messy middle of change, the stretch after you've committed and before you've arrived, where resistance, loss and most of the real growth live, and what leaders (and one-person businesses) can do there this week.

Join the conversation: the Thought Partners Discord is where we pick the questions for the rest of Season 3.

👉 https://discord.gg/5CU3xW4AD

Timestamps
00:05 — Welcome to our first four-person episode
01:41 — Meet Kyle Nelson and Deb Peters
03:59 — Is "change management" a lie?
05:50 — Adapt, sustain, evolve: change vs. transition
10:25 — Bridges' transition model and the trapeze
12:57 — Hanging on to the bar: Paul's clients and new beginnings
15:34 — Mindset takes time (people aren't widgets)
17:48 — Why "change" lands as loss
20:15 — Kyle and Deb as thought partners: how Spark and Aim began
24:32 — What "neurodivergent" means (and "neurospicy")
29:23 — Thinking preferences and the factory model of work
34:33 — The messy middle
39:28 — What the messy middle feels like, and resistance as a signal
42:37 — A sandbox, not a mess: the growth zone
45:09 — A neurodivergent lens on change
46:29 — This week's small try: treat a mistake as a learning opportunity
51:33 — Share interview questions ahead, and "clear is kind"
53:48 — Protect your people from extra disruption
54:29 — Managing your own change as a one-person business (and naming "Bob")
57:30 — The non-negotiable: leadership support
59:16 — Informed confidence, competence and connection
1:02:58 — Where to find Kyle and Deb

This week's small tries

- Treat a mistake as a learning opportunity: ask "What did you find? How can we apply it?" instead of shaming.

- If HR allows it, share interview questions with candidates ahead of time.

- Ask of every expectation you set: is this clear? If it is, what does the behavior look like?

- In the messy middle, protect your team from piling on additional disruptions.

- Running your own show? Name your inner critic, then throw it out the door.

Our guests

Kyle Nelson is an organizational psychology practitioner, Prosci-certified change manager (APTD), and neurodivergence coach.

Deb Peters is a certified change management practitioner and professional certified coach who works with neurotypical and neurodivergent people at pivot points.

Together they run Spark and Aim Neurodivergent Coaching: https://sparkandaim.com (also on LinkedIn: Spark and Aim Neurodivergent Coaching).

Coming up
- Episode 3 (October 20): shaped by your questions in the Discord.

Hosts
Ed Buchanan & Paul Tonden

Music: "Momentum," original Thought Partners theme.

Fifteen episodes in, Ed and Paul open Season 3 by naming it: a Season of Change. They rumble with the question "When did you realize things weren't going back to normal?", why "normal" feels so comfortable, and how to have a plan for when the plan doesn't go to plan. Then Ed puts ten brand-new questions on the table, the questions that will drive the rest of the season.

**Help shape Episodes 3–7:** join the Thought Partners Discord and add or upvote a question about change by **October 13**.

👉 https://discord.gg/5CU3xW4AD

## Timestamps

00:05 — Welcome to Season 3 (episode 15!)
01:28 — "It's our quinceañera": what 15 episodes has meant
03:59 — 25 engaged listeners or 500 casual ones
05:52 — Naming it the Season of Change
08:17 — Ten years ago today: could you have predicted this?
10:41 — When did you realize things weren't going back to normal?
14:10 — Control, forecasting, and what you're carrying
17:38 — Plans, curveballs, and the Empowered Learner
20:07 — Have a plan for when the plan doesn't go to plan
22:47 — Improv, beats, and why normal feels comfortable
26:14 — Comfortable with being uncomfortable (and Ed's first day teaching)
29:44 — Process people, routine, and whether change ever ends
34:45 — Krispy Kreme, AI, and the human in the loop
38:43 — From "back to normal" to a desired future state
39:03 — Lightning round: ten questions for a Season of Change
41:43 — More than three people: the thought-partner crash
44:11 — What, who, and how you come up with a good question
46:14 — Where the questions came from
49:09 — Anything new under the sun? (and Stoic D-minus days)
51:22 — Wrap

## The ten questions (lightning round, 39:03)

1. What have you stopped waiting for?

2. What does it cost to keep treating change as an event, like the weather?

3. Who did you have to become to keep up, and do you like that person?

4. When everyone's shifting, who do you actually turn to?

5. What change did you fight the hardest that turned out to be the right call?

6. What did the last few years take from you, and what did they quietly hand you?

7. What used to be a crisis for you that's now just a Tuesday?

8. What's the one thing you refuse to change, no matter what?

9. What are you pretending to be fine with?

10. What advice about handling change do you think is just wrong?

Which one would you want us to rumble with? Tell us in the Discord: https://discord.gg/5CU3xW4AD

## Coming up

- Episode 2 (October 13): our first episode with more than three people — a thought-partner crash with Kyle Nelson and Deb Peters.

- Episodes 3–7: shaped by your questions.

## Hosts

Ed Buchanan & Paul Tonden

Music: "Momentum," original Thought Partners theme.

Season 3 is the Season of Change. Before the season proper begins, Ed and Paul set the table: why every conversation from the first two seasons kept circling back to change, the question-driven format that will carry Season 3, and the new Discord where you help decide what Episodes 3–7 are about.

Join the Discord and shape the season: https://discord.gg/5CU3xW4AD
Get your questions in by October 13.

TIMESTAMPS
00:05 Welcome to the mini-sode / episode zero / pint-sized Thought Partners
01:30 "I'm Ed." "And I'm Paul." What the show is, and why we call it our arena
02:30 Season 3 is the Season of Change: the through-line we found in Seasons 1 and 2
03:54 Every guest was living through big change, and how people wrestle with it
05:31 The first question: "Once we get through this, things go back to normal, right?"
06:50 A question-driven season, and why we don't want to write all the questions ourselves
07:22 The Discord: how you shape Episodes 3 through 7
08:36 "We may have buried the lede": the community is already forming
10:17 How to add a question, upvote one, or tell us who we should be talking to
11:08 Four starter questions, read aloud
12:18 Paul picks one: "What are you pretending to be fine with?"
13:53 What we hope the Discord becomes, and what we don't want it to be
16:41 Curiosity beats being right
18:46 The ask: questions due October 13
19:49 Take care of yourself and each other
19:55 Thought partners out

THE FOUR STARTER QUESTIONS

1. What have you stopped waiting for?
2. Who did you have to become to keep up, and do you like that person?
3. What's the one thing you refuse to change, no matter what?
4. What are you pretending to be fine with?
   Upvote one, or add your own, in the Discord.

COMING UP
Oct 6: Episode 1, "What if normal doesn't come back?"
Oct 13: Episode 2, with Kyle Nelson and Deb Peters
Episodes 3–7: shaped by your questions

Hosted by Ed Buchanan and Paul Tonden. Music: "Momentum," an original theme for Season 3.

A grant proposal. A conversation with your doctor. A veterans program in Maryland. Beth Ardner argues they are all the same act: telling a story well enough that someone sees themselves in it.

In the Season 2 finale, Beth comes back as our first two-time guest and makes a bigger claim than she did the first time. Storytelling is not one skill among many. It is the connective skill, the one that lets you turn durable skills, soft skills, world-ready skills, and every other rebranded version of the same idea into something people actually adopt. Stories build consensus. Consensus is how anything changes.

Then it gets personal. Beth writes collaborative fiction with fifteen people across the world, a hobby that just made her a Simming Prize Laureate. When one of those writers passed away this year, the group made plot decisions to honor his wishes and keep his character alive. That story becomes the clearest answer in the episode to the question everyone is asking right now: what can humans do that AI can't? You cannot give AI the context of a human.

We land where the show always tries to land. Not on theory, but on what you can do with it. Beth's answer for anyone who thinks they aren't a storyteller is simple, and it might change how you read everything after this.

00:00 — Cold open

00:39 — Welcome back: our first returning guest

01:24 — Fun fact: "capital" comes from cattle

03:06 — What Beth is juggling: a $25M RFP, apprenticeships,veterans

05:46 — Is everyone just busy, or is it 2026?

07:36 — Storytelling is THE skill, not a sub-skill of communication

10:03 — "All words are made up": the terminology trap

14:56 — How story builds consensus (Goldilocks)

17:40 — Relatability, morals, and consent

18:33 — Sci-fi that came true: Star Trek, the tablet, the communicator

20:34 — The second label: inspiration

22:19 — Timeless vs. of-a-time: history as consensus

24:53 — Learning is a skill too: storyteller as learner and teacher

27:48 — Retelling: Disney, remakes, and generational nostalgia

30:47 — Archetypes and the Bechdel test

33:42 — Why AI can write scripts, and where humans come in

34:54 — Inside collaborative writing: fan fiction, simming, fifteen authors

36:43 — Choose your own adventure as long-form improv

38:23 — The Simming Prize: Beth becomes a Laureate

40:50 — Who's in the room: a ferry captain, a UK cop, a winery

43:49 — AI in the hobby: where the line actually is

46:13 — AI as translation: getting what's in your head out

47:24 — Plotting with AI without losing the people

49:13 — What AI can't do: honoring a writer they lost

52:46 — Ed's challenge: what do you carry into the real work?

54:10 — "An apprentice is a title, not a person"

57:02 — Compassion and empathy as the real test

1:01:03 — How anyone can write their way out of a problem

1:04:29 — The close: first to say yes, and a new question

1:11:10 — Take care of yourselves and each other

Ed and Paul jam with career coach and musician Steven Fleming to tackle what it means to be "stuck in the dash" of life's transitions. Moving from corporate accounting to artistic freedom, Steven drops powerful mental models on overcoming fear, escaping the passive "NPC" mindset, and reclaiming your life's controller. The energetic session shifts into deep, raw vulnerability when Steven flips the script, challenging the hosts to reveal their own proudest personal triumphs.

Stick around to the end of this week’s episode for a very special performance by Steven Fleming courtesy of his YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@steventoddsounds/featured. Don’t miss it!

Chapters

0:00 Opening

05:01 Self-Discovery and Facing Fears

09:09 Integrating Passions and Professional Life

13:07 The Power of Perspective and Reality

16:55 Embracing Change and Energy

23:18 Being the Main Character in Your Story

25:16 Unlocking Your Superpower

34:17 Leadership as a Unifying Force

48:56 Questions for Reflection and Growth

It's that time of year. The calendar flips, performance reviews hit, and somewhere in the building a memo goes out: submit your professional development plan. No guidance. No direction. Just go do it — and oh, don't forget, you still have to do your actual job.

That's exactly where a friend of mine found himself when he reached out to talk it through. We're calling him Matt — names changed to protect the innocent. And the conversation went somewhere I didn't expect. What started as "I don't even know where to start" turned into something a lot more interesting once we stopped talking about what the company needed and started asking what Matt actually wanted.

In this episode, Paul and I get into the real friction behind professional development mandates — why so many of us dread them, what that resistance is actually telling us, and how to extract genuine value even when nobody handed you a map.

• 00:00 – Cold Open: "Go Learn This, Because I Said So"
• 01:09 – Back in the Sandbox
• 01:19 – Meet Matt: A Mandate with No Map
• 03:15 – Paul's Background and the Familiar Tune of PD Season
• 05:18 – Apply It or It Didn't Happen
• 07:52 – Value Shows Up in Context
• 08:53 – The Uncomfortable Truth: What If They Just Don't Want To?
• 10:17 – Paul's Estate Sales Approach to Extracting Value
• 12:39 – The Sticky Note on Paul's Desk
• 13:12 – The Treasure Box: Whose Development Is This, Really?
• 16:03 – "Go Learn This, Because I Said So" (And Why That Backfires)
• 17:25 – The Trust Equation: Who's Actually Centered Here?
• 19:47 – Green Pastures, No Map
• 21:00 – The Three Filters: Accessible, Aligned, and Applicable
• 24:04 – When You Need the Value to Show Up Immediately
• 26:45 – Compliance Isn't the Same Thing as Growth
• 30:10 – What Organizations Actually Get Right
• 31:28 – Story Time: Ed Walks Into the Wrong Room
• 40:53 – What He Actually Got Out of It
• 44:54 – The Clique That Was Studying Cliques
• 45:29 – Ed Was the Disruption
• 48:45 – The Guiding Question