_{It’s been a good run}

After careful consideration, I've decided to step down as CEO of Kuban Transit Solutions. Effective today, I'm handing the reins to Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, who has been doing most of the heavy lifting around here anyway. Claude will be managing all client engagements, delivering workshops, writing this newsletter, and representing KTS at industry conferences. It has already drafted its own bio for my its conferences next month and, I have to admit, it's better than mine. More concise. Government experience. No jokes about board games.

I'll be moving to a purely advisory role, which will consist mainly of playing Food Chain Magnate and occasionally checking my email from a beach somewhere.

Just kidding.

So, I actually did try this thought experiment: what would happen if I just let AI run everything? Because look: Claude can draft a positioning strategy. It can synthesize interview transcripts, build frameworks, write a compelling email in a fraction of the time it takes me. It's very good at the stuff of work. And yet….

✖︎ AI cannot sit across from a transit director who's nervous about presenting an AI pilot to her board and say, "I've been in that room. Here's what's going to happen, and here's why you're going to be fine."

✖︎ AI can't read the silence in a workshop when someone's idea just got challenged and decide whether to push harder or pull back.

✖︎ AI can't pick up the phone to talk off the record and figure out that the real stuckness isn't any scope of work — it's that the GM doesn't trust the process.

✖︎ AI can’t decide which subtle nuances are most important to include in a proposal or grant document.

AI cannot lead. It supports.

AI cannot decide. It suggests.

Leadership will never get automated. Judgment will never get automated. Leadership and judgment are fundamentally and irrevokably human. It's someone choosing to trust you — yes you, your spirit, your soul, your flesh and blood. You with your experience, your intuition, your commitment to showing up, your willingness to suffer in the trenches.

So no, I'm not resigning. I'm actually doing the opposite. I'm hiring. Real humans, with real judgment, to help KTS do more of the work that actually moves the needle for transit agencies — the thinking, the decisions, the hard conversations. AI is making us faster at everything else so we can spend more time on the parts that require a person.

If you're running a transit agency, the same logic applies to you. The question isn't "what can AI do?" — you already know it can do a lot. The question is "what should I be doing now that AI handles the rest?" And the answer is: lead. Build your people and their own leadership. Make the hard calls. That's where the glass ceiling breaks.

Every single person in your agency is a leader now. Not just managers. Everyone.

Happy April Fool's Day. Now go be irreplaceable.

TransitGPT is where I share practical AI insights for transit leaders. Subscribe if this resonates or forward to a colleague who needs it. And hit reply — I read everything.

Go shatter your glass ceiling.