Welcome to The Iconic Edge, your playbook for thriving in the AI age.
In this edition, you'll see why the shift to AI agents makes your experience even more valuable, and how to start using it to build a portfolio career that's yours.
Years ago I managed a bright analyst who handed me a report that looked perfect. Clean charts, confident summary, not a typo in sight.
I had to get him to re-do it. The numbers were sound, but the conclusion was wrong. I knew because I'd sat in the same meetings. But I had a broader context.
He couldn't see what I could, in about ten seconds, because he didn’t have the instinct and knowledge I had built through experience.
That ability, for catching outwardly polished work that's quietly wrong, is about to become the most valuable thing you own.
The shift you might have missed
Until recently, AI was like a clever assistant. You asked, it answered, you checked, you asked again. You were in the driving seat throughout.
Now the good stuff runs on its own. You hand an "agent" a task and it works for hours, corrects its own mistakes, and comes back done.
Ethan Mollick, a leading voice on AI at work, calls it the shift from chatting with AI to managing it.
He refers to a study that looked at who got the best results, and the answer was the opposite of what you'd expect. It wasn't the coders or the most technical people. It was the ones with the deepest experience in the work, who pulled better output from every instruction.
When AI does the work in seconds, judgement becomes the differentiator.
Is this right? Is it nearly right, which is worse? What did it miss that only someone who's lived the work would catch? Does this point make sense?
Excellent judgement can’t be bought. You build it, one polished-but-wrong report at a time. A newcomer with the same tools can't fake it.
The experience you worried AI would erase is exactly what AI needs to guide it.
The working world is being rewritten right now. The ladder is dissolving, the old loyalty-for-security deal is ending, and polished work is becoming cheap.
This really is the best opening you've had in your working life, to be part of a once in generations transformation.
The tools to grab the opportunity are in your grasp. But only if you move beyond the basics.
Because the same skill that steers one agent is the skill that runs a whole team of them.
Point that team to build: your personal brand, a second income stream, a platform that works however AI reshapes things.
Learn to do that now, while the window is open, and you will be ahead of the big game.
Put your experience to work
If you want to be part of this shift, start before you feel ready.
Here's how to begin this week.
1. ‘Hire’ your first agent.
First up, you can't do this in the normal chat box. To have AI actually go and do a job, you need an agent, and the two easiest to reach are ChatGPT's agent mode and Claude's Cowork (both on their paid plans). No coding needed.
Manage it like you'd manage a person: a clear brief, room to work, a proper review at the end.
That's the leap, from just asking questions to handing over the work.
To learn how to set up an agent step by step, read this article from my favourite AI expert Allie K Miller (after reading the rest of this newsletter of course!)
2. Feed it something you know backwards
Hand it a whole project and it works through the steps and comes back with the finished thing.. At first, pick work you could do in your sleep andthen watch how it does on ground you know well, where it's strong and where it wanders.
3. Read it like you'd read a junior's work.
This is your edge. Don't skim for typos. Ask the questions only you can: what did it assume that isn't true? Where does it sound confident and land wrong? Every time you spot one, that's your experience earning its keep.
4. Point it at something that's yours.
Once you’re more confident, hand over more, projects beyond the day job. Things like, the LinkedIn profile you keep meaning to write. The talk you'd give if you got the stage. The thing of your own you've always meant to build. The book you have in you that you need help to bring to life. Basically anything that you ‘have not had time for’ in the past but see as part of your portfolio career in the future.
5. Hire the rest of your team when ready.
When you have been working with one agent for a while, ask it what other agents would be useful for your team. Then get your agent to ask you questions to create those new agents.
Before long you could have an entire C-Suite in place with sub-agents as their teams. Each focusing on one aspect of YOU Limited, with you as the CEO.
In the past, lack of time, energy and resources limited your ability to grow beyond your job role.
But now with your own agents on your side doing the work, while you make the decisions, your options are limitless.
That's how a team of one builds an iconic platform.
The Bottom Line
Soon everyone in your field will have the same tools, working at the same speed.
When the doing is free, what sets you apart is being able to tell good from nearly-good. And that comes from having seen enough to know when something's off, before you can explain why.
Learning to direct AI well is the groundwork for everything that comes next.
Start now and you will be ready for whatever the working world evolves into.
Reply and tell me one judgement call you can make in seconds that someone new to your field couldn't, however good their AI. I read every reply.
All my best,
Nichola
P.S. One day soon this will be more than a newsletter. It'll be a room full of women who saw the shift early and built for it. If that's someone you know, send this her way. We rise together.