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Howie Liu believes the AI era requires leaders to collapse traditional role boundaries and embrace a more hands-on, experimental approach to product development.

In this new world, the most successful leaders are those who stay deeply connected to the details while maintaining a holistic vision. Liu discovered that stepping away from product details—something he once thought mature CEOs should do—actually disconnected him from what made Airtable special. Instead, he found that maintaining founder-mode engagement with the product creates both better outcomes and more personal fulfillment.

Liu restructured Airtable into two distinct groups: a "fast thinking" team focused on rapid AI innovation and a "slow thinking" team handling more deliberate, infrastructure-focused work. This dual approach allows the company to ship exciting new AI capabilities weekly while still building the robust foundation needed for enterprise-scale deployments.

For product teams, Liu emphasizes that success now requires versatility across disciplines. The most effective PMs are becoming "hybrid PM-prototypers with good design sensibilities," while engineers and designers similarly need to expand beyond their traditional domains. This isn't about everyone becoming experts at everything, but rather developing enough cross-functional literacy to work more autonomously and make holistic product decisions.

Liu encourages experiential learning through play rather than theoretical understanding. He tells his team: "If you want to cancel all your meetings for a day or even a week and just play around with every AI product you think could be relevant to Airtable, go do it." This hands-on exploration helps people understand not just what AI can do, but how it feels to use it—critical knowledge for creating compelling experiences.

For leaders navigating this transition, Liu suggests a fundamental reframing: "If you were literally founding a new company from scratch with the same mission, how would you execute using a fully AI-native approach?" This clean-slate thinking helps identify whether your existing assets provide genuine advantages or if you're holding onto outdated approaches that limit innovation.