Working notes on getting AI adopted on the floor — the systems, the processes, and the people.
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CSV Might Be the Worst Format You’re Feeding Your AI
Same data, same questions, same model — only the format changed. CSV scored 44.3%; a markdown key-value format hit 60.7%. Structure is…
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Bad Data Doesn’t Cause AI to Stall — It Exposes the Real Problem
A recent survey of 100 manufacturing organizations found that 73% say data is where their AI efforts most commonly stall. A separate…
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The Real AI Adoption Gap Isn’t Adoption
If your bar for “transformational” is enterprise-wide reinvention, of course most initiatives fall short in year one. But if your bar is…
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Is Your AI Implementation Crashing at the “What?”
A recent industry analysis on AI in manufacturing draws a line worth sitting with: the shift from “analytical AI” — tools that…
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AI Strategy Points: The Gap Compounds
The AI divide isn’t a one-time gap you can close with a training day. It compounds — the people who learn a…
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AI Strategy Points: The Prompt Was Never the Point — Context Was
We spent two years perfecting clever prompts. The real skill turned out to be quieter — assembling the right context and handing…
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AI Strategy Points: People Won’t Adopt What They’re Afraid to Use Badly
Adoption doesn’t stall on capability. It stalls on fear — of looking slow, of being wrong, of getting punished for an experiment…
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AI Strategy Points: Fluency Is Built in Reps, Not Rollouts
The organizations getting real value from AI didn’t train their way there in a day. They built the habit one small rep…
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AI Strategy Points: AI Amplifies the Process You Already Have
A fast tool bolted to a broken process doesn’t fix the process. It just gets you to the wrong place sooner.
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AI Strategy Points: The Bottleneck Moves to Judgment
When generating the work gets cheap, the scarce skill isn’t making things anymore — it’s knowing which output is good enough to…
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AI Strategy Points: You’re Still Accountable for the Output
I called twelve the finale. A few conversations since convinced me the most important point still needed saying — the tool never…
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AI Strategy Points: To Get the Most Out of AI, Ask Different Questions
Twelve points in, the throughline is simple: the tool rewards people who ask better questions, not people who ask more of them.
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AI Strategy Points: The Art of the Prompt Depends on the Integrity of the Data
Everyone wants to talk about prompt technique. Almost nobody wants to talk about the unglamorous data work that determines whether the prompt…
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AI Strategy Points: AI Projects Need to Solve Real Problems for Real People
The AI projects that quietly fail almost never fail on technology. They fail because they were never actually anyone’s problem to begin…
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AI Strategy Points: What, So What, and Now What — Applied to AI
The framework I built for operational dashboards turns out to be the clearest way I know to define what “value” actually means…
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AI Strategy Points: Scaling AI Is About Successful Test Cases, Not Big Launches
Big-bang AI rollouts rarely earn the trust they need. Scaling looks a lot more like Kotter’s short-term wins than a company-wide launch…
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AI Strategy Points: A Super-Intelligent, Hyper-Literal, Eager, Inexperienced Intern
The metaphor that’s helped me manage AI’s failure modes better than any other: it’s an intern who will produce exactly what you…
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AI Strategy Points: Most Initiatives Start With Training. The Real Starting Point Is Data
Organizations rush to teach people how to prompt an AI before making sure the data underneath is trustworthy. That order is backwards.
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AI Strategy Points: AI Will Make Smart People Genius and Average People Smart
AI doesn’t flatten the gap between your strongest and weakest performers. It tends to widen it, in a specific and predictable direction.
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AI Strategy Points: People Won’t Lose Their Jobs to AI — Yet. They’ll Lose Them to People Who Adopt AI
The threat most people are worried about isn’t the one that’s actually coming for them right now.
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AI Strategy Points: A Realistic Assessment of AI End Users and AI Builders
Most organizations treat AI adoption as one population learning one skill. In practice, end users and builders need almost entirely different things…
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AI Strategy Points: AI Initiatives Have to Create Value to Stick — But Whose Value?
Everyone agrees AI initiatives need to create value. Almost nobody agrees on what value means, or who gets to decide.
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AI Strategy Points: If You’re Just Starting, You May Already Be Behind the Curve
I started with ChatGPT a few years before it went mainstream, trying to get ahead of what looked like a coming wave.…
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Power BI Was the Project. Learning to Collaborate With AI Was the Transformation.
I began with a production report and a desire for better insight. I ended with a deeper understanding of Power BI, AI…
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