Episode #1049 of Thinking With Mitch Joel is now live.

This conversation with Farid Mheir gets into a shift that many leaders still seem to be underestimating: AI is not simply giving us better tools. It is changing the availability of intelligence itself. Farid has spent four decades at the intersection of engineering, business strategy and digital transformation. Trained as a microelectronics engineer, he helped pioneer online grocery commerce with IGA in the mid-1990s, long before most people were thinking seriously about ecommerce infrastructure. He went on to build digital platforms for major retailers across North America and Europe, and today advises executives on AI strategy and organizational transformation through his advisory firm, FMCS.Digital. He is also a faculty member at the McGill Executive Institute, where he helps leaders make sense of what this next era demands.

His new book, AI Mindsets – A Guide To Succeed In An AI-Driven World, distills decades of experience into thirty-one practical mindsets for leaders trying to move beyond AI hype.

That is what makes Farid’s perspective so useful. He is not treating AI as a software upgrade, a productivity hack or another innovation trend to be delegated to the technology team. He sees it as a broader organizational and cultural transformation. The internet democratized access to information. AI is beginning to democratize access to intelligence. That distinction matters. When answers, analysis, code, content and expertise become more widely available, the scarce resource is no longer simply knowledge. It becomes wisdom… judgment… critical thinking… experience. The ability to ask better questions, evaluate better answers and decide what is worth doing in the first place. In this conversation, Farid and I talk about prompt engineering, answer engineering, AI agents, software development, the future of job titles, and why experience may become more valuable as intelligence becomes more abundant. We also get into the generational shift in how people interact with AI, the cultural work required inside organizations, and why the greatest opportunity may not be replacing people, but moving them upstream toward more creative and strategic work. Mostly, this is a conversation about how leaders think. The companies that succeed in the AI era may not be the ones that collect the most tools or chase the newest demos. They may be the ones willing to rethink work, leadership and value creation from the inside out.

The episode is now live. Listen to my conversation with Farid Mheir here: AI Mindsets With Farid Mheir – TWMJ #1049.

 

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