Curiosity, Preparation, and the Problem with Slop

A guitar lesson with my niece exposed a leadership blind spot. Why curiosity plus preparation is the antidote to both the pointless meeting and the empty AI report.

Around Christmas, I gave my niece a guitar. She's been practicing faithfully ever since. So when I went to my sister's house recently to celebrate my younger niece's birthday, while everyone else was in the pool, I asked: "Can I hear what you've been working on?"

We spent the better part of an hour together. She showed me songs she was learning, and I offered tips on technique and how to develop her ear. It was natural. Genuine.

On the drive home, my wife said: "I've never seen you engage like that with anyone wanting to learn guitar."

I responded with something like this: I think it's because she had already put in the work. She'd spent the last six months practicing and learning the basics. She had developed actual musical vocabulary. So when we talked, we could have a real conversation. We weren't starting from scratch. When people ask for help but haven't taken any initiative, it feels like a waste of time.

Then Emily asked a challenging question: "You know, a lot of people come and ask for your help. Maybe you need to be better at meeting them where they are, not expecting them to have done so much preparation. If you did that more, you might spark their curiosity."

She's not wrong. She was identifying a leadership blind spot.

I remember learning guitar in a world without YouTube. If you wanted to know how to play barre chords, you had to find someone who knew. I literally rode my skateboard to a friend's house just to watch his fingers and try to figure out how to play a C#m. Knowledge was scarce. Access was hard. I carried that same spirit into everything with my band, seeking out expertise in live sound, lighting, video production, and merchandise creation. My curiosity served me well.

Today, everything is available. Every technique, every song, every foundational concept is on YouTube or accessible through AI. The barrier to knowledge is gone. I watched some YouTube tutorials to relearn some of my own bass parts in preparation for the THIRD DAY 30th Anniversary Tour!

But here's what I'm wrestling with when we bring this idea to the world of work: we're now experiencing both extremes of a broken dynamic.

The Two Broken Extremes

On one end, I've sat through more than my fair share of hour-long meetings where I've left thinking, "That really could have been an email." We gather people, we hash out things that could be decided asynchronously, we waste time out of habit or fear of missing out. We prioritize the meeting over the substance.

On the other end, I've been handed multi-page AI reports that are nothing more than AI slop: generated quickly, lacking any human thought, any critical eye, any real insight. Just output for output's sake. No human thought whatsoever.

Both extremes come from the same place: a lack of real preparation and genuine curiosity.

The Formula

So here's where it gets tricky: when someone comes to you asking for help, it's easy to be frustrated if they haven't taken the initiative to research first. They haven't asked Claude. They haven't searched YouTube. They're asking you to do work that's readily available to them. But frustration without patience doesn't help anyone.

On the flip side, if I'm the one seeking help or generating something, I'm fully convinced that it's incumbent on me to do my research first. To take advantage of AI tools thoughtfully. To get to the edge of what I can figure out on my own before I ask for someone's time. And if I'm using AI, I need to actually think about what I'm asking it to do, not just hit generate and pass it along.

The formula I'm working toward is this: extend grace when it comes to others, but be prepared when it comes to myself.

Because here's what I really value: curiosity. But I've learned that curiosity alone isn't enough. Curiosity plus initiative. That's the formula. That's what attracts people to want to be on your team, to invest in you, to lean in the way I leaned in with my niece.

She showed curiosity. She showed initiative. She did the work first. And that's when the real engagement happened.

The same is true for meetings. A well-prepared meeting, one where people have done their homework, thought critically, and come with questions rather than just information to share, is a meeting worth having. That's not wasting time. That's leveraging human connection for what it's actually good for.

And with AI, the same principle applies. If I use AI as a starting point for thinking, as a tool to help me prepare, to challenge my assumptions, to push my work further, that's powerful. But if I use it as a replacement for thinking, if I just generate and ship without a human eye, without critical evaluation, I'm creating slop. And that's disrespectful to the person on the receiving end.

So the challenge as a leader is holding all of this at once: extend grace to people showing initial interest, and help spark that curiosity. But also create a culture where we all understand that preparation matters. Where we do our own research first. Where we think critically about meetings: are they necessary, or could this be an email? Where we use AI thoughtfully, not as a shortcut to avoid thinking.

That's the competitive advantage in a world where information is free, AI is accessible, and attention is scarce. It's not about efficiency alone. It's about the tension between efficiency and substance, between speed and thought.

Curiosity plus preparation. That's the antidote to both the wasteful meeting and the empty AI report. That's where real connection happens.

So I have a question for you

Where do you draw that line yourself: extending grace to someone who hasn't done the homework, or expecting preparation before you invest your time?

If your team is working out how to use AI thoughtfully without drowning in slop, that is exactly what my keynotes, workshops, and leadership sessions are built for. Learn more at taianderson.live/keynotes.

Originally published on LinkedIn, August 7, 2026.