3 min read Free

Automation series #3: AI Automation: When Judgment, Language, or Ambiguity Matters

Models earn their place by converting messy language into bounded, structured judgment. Narrow classification, extraction, drafting, summarization, routing, and recommendation jobs become dependable only when surrounding workflows validate outputs, apply confidence gates, and control actions.
4 min read Free

Automation series #2: Deterministic Workflows: When Reliability Matters More Than Intelligence

Exact work should remain deliberately boring: code, rules, schemas, and APIs are cheaper, faster, and easier to test. Deterministic workflows provide the reliable foundation that lets models address genuine ambiguity without controlling the entire process.
3 min read Free

Automation series #1: Automation Is Not One Thing

Useful automation separates deterministic work, probabilistic interpretation, and accountable decisions. Assigning code, models, and humans according to each task’s nature replaces the vague ambition to automate everything with an architecture that can be tested and trusted.
4 min read Free

Power series: #10 Build Your Power Map

Organizational power becomes usable when mapped around a concrete outcome. Assessing authority, influence, legitimacy, expertise, trust, resources, information, relationships, narrative, and follow-through reveals where execution capacity lives and what must change to move the work.
4 min read Free

Power series: #9 AI Is Rewriting the Power Map

AI redistributes organizational power by widening access to expertise, production, analysis, and coordination. Gatekeeping weakens, operators gain leverage, and expert value shifts toward judgment, standards, system design, review, and accountability rather than control of basic output.
4 min read Free

Power series: #8 Trust, Reputation, and Execution Power

Trust is execution power because it lowers the organizational cost of action. Consistent evidence of judgment, fairness, discretion, honesty, and follow-through earns earlier context, greater latitude, faster decisions, and resilience when mistakes inevitably occur.
4 min read Free

Power series: #7 Conflict Is Often a Power Signal

Many apparent communication failures are disputes over decision rights, priorities, resources, expertise, risk, credit, or workload. Naming the contested power exposes the real tradeoff and prevents polite alignment rituals from leaving consequential conflicts unresolved.
4 min read Free

Power series #6: Coalition-Building Without Politics Theater

Coalitions turn formal permission into coordinated execution by aligning context, authority, constraints, tradeoffs, and commitment across dependencies. Built transparently and with respect for others’ agency, they help important cross-functional work survive its first collision with reality.

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