Writing

I write on Substack, for leaders putting AI to work in the business they run.

• For Leaders Who Carry a Business in Their Head

  There's a quirk of flight called ground effect. When a plane flies close to the ground, air compresses under the wings and gives it extra lift. The plane performs better than it should, and the pilot does nothing to earn it.

  Leaders get the same lift. The closer you stay to the work, the better everything runs. You answer the emails, approve the invoices, remember which client needs their report a certain way, and the business flies. From the outside, it looks effortless.

  Read the full article on Substack →

• Your First SOP with AI Shows How Your Business Runs

  Pick something you do every week. A customer emails asking for a copy of a file that lives in your CRM. You've handled it a hundred times. Now write the instructions so an AI can do it instead.

  You'll get about one line in before you stall.

  Read the full article on Substack →

• AI Can't Guess Decisions Made on Autopilot

  Last time, you found out that “find the customer's invoice” isn't one instruction. It's a stack of small decisions (which invoice, which address, what to do if it's missing) that you make on autopilot.

  Knowing the decisions is the first step. The next step is getting the decisions on the page, where an AI can follow them.

  Read the full article on Substack →

• How Do You Know an AI SOP Is Done?

  You've done the hard part. You turned “reply to the customer” into a list of the decisions. Buried inside it: which invoice if there's more than one, what to do if the name doesn't match, when to stop and ask a person. That was the real work. Most people never get that far.

  So you're done, right? Not yet.

  Read the full article on Substack →

• Do As I Say Not as I Do

  Yesterday, I got into a screaming match with Claude. Technically, it wasn't a match, because it didn't scream back. It also didn't hear a thing I said. It kept assuring me it had fixed things and changed things, in that “I'll never do it again, I promise” way a kid says when they've been caught.

  I try not to curse at my AI. I'm mostly successful. But this time I almost punched my monitor, and I knew something was wrong. One of my rules for myself is to take 75 percent of the responsibility. So after I calmed down, I went looking for my share.

  Read the full article on Substack →