The Human Advantage (Post 4/8): Nobody scales alone. Even Batman had Alfred.
The most dangerous lie in tech? "I built this myself."
Every successful person is actually two or three people. You just see one name on LinkedIn, or one person on stage.
Steve Jobs had Jony Ive. Akbar had Birbal. Batman had Alfred.
Alfred ran a multinational corporation, managed billions, provided therapy, and kept a vigilante from getting killed. Batman? Batman punched clowns.
Many of us have lived this. Our biggest wins? They were never just ours.
That VP everyone calls brilliant? Someone writes their strategies while they take meetings. That manager who "ships everything"? Someone turns their chaos into execution. That founder who "scaled"? Someone built the machine or algorithm while they were on podcasts.
Your success belongs to 2-3 people executing while you sleep. When they leave, you discover what "your" success really was.
And, this is exactly how it should work.
Nobody builds alone. The myth of the solo genius is toxic.
What makes someone truly senior or a leader? They've found their people:
• The one who executes when they're thinking
• The one who thinks when they're executing
• The one who says "this is stupid" in private before the customer says it in public
The higher you climb, the less truth you hear. People stop pushing back. They start "protecting" you from bad news.
That's how careers finish. Not from incompetence – from isolation.
AI can't be your Alfred. They're selling you AI assistants with "memory" now. They'll remember your preferences, your patterns.
But here's what AI assistant won't do: They won't feel or know what you are feeling. Won't take the blame when you screw up. Won't support you in the rooms you aren't in.
That's not learned memory. That's loyalty. And loyalty requires something to lose.
AI has no skin in the game. And, its reward is a $20 subscription.
Your shadow team does. They'd take a bullet for you. AI would optimize the bullet's trajectory.
If you think you're succeeding alone, you're not succeeding. You just haven't noticed who's carrying you.
Find your two or three. Admit you need them. Share whatever it takes to keep them.
Because your career isn't about being the smartest. It's about building a trust circle so tight that you succeed together or burn together.
That mutual destruction pact? AI can't sign up for that, it's designed to reason, not feel and built to be helpful, not loyal.
Next: "Trust is not vibes. You can engineer it."
Reflect, who are your three people (at job and in life)?
This is The Human Advantage.
#TheHumanAdvantage
—