The first principle
Say how you think, out loud, once.
Until you say it, it lives only in your head. Once it’s in words, it can be built.
Seven principles
Your know-how is the asset, and it’s stuck in your head.
“Only I know how this really works.”Everything you’re good at, the judgment calls, the order of things, the little fixes you make without thinking, lives in your head. That’s the real asset, and right now it can only travel with you.
Notice before you build.
“What do I keep chasing, retyping or explaining?”Before building anything, watch for what you keep chasing, retyping or explaining to people. That list is the starting point: notice first, build second.
Define “done.”
“Booked and paid isn’t the same as ready to go.”A job on the calendar isn’t a job done. Define done so that someone else could pick it up and finish it without calling you.
Every process is a story.
“Who, when, what sets it off, and what happens on a bad day?”A process has a cast and a setting: who’s involved, when it happens, what sets it off. Ask what happens on a bad day too, because that is where most of the detail lives.
Describe the person, not the feature.
“Not ‘did I tell them?’ but ‘what did they understand?’”What you told someone and what they understood are different things. A description of the person, what they know, what they need and when, is a better guide to what to build than a list of features.
Simplify, buy, connect, then build.
“Can we drop the step before we automate it?”Before you automate a step, ask whether you need it at all. Then see whether you can buy something that already does it, or connect what you already have. Build only what is left.
Trust comes in steps.
“Let it read first. Then draft. Then act, with my okay.”Start with the AI reading, and look at what it understood. Then let it draft, with you reading before anything moves. Let it act only when you’ve seen it get the work right, and even then, with your okay.
Where it starts
It starts with leadership.
Leaders are the ones holding the big picture. These tools let a leader take in more, sort it faster and do more of it, quickly.
It is harder to hand this to someone with a narrow role. They can carry out what you tell them, but they don’t have your whole background, and what you pass along is a summary. It works better when you put your entire vision and your entire desire into it yourself.
That is why the first principle is to say how you think, out loud. It also means I’m not the right person for every business. If you have an IT team, they should lead, and I’m glad to help leadership and IT talk it through.
Borrowed eyes
Imagining what’s possible means looking from somewhere else.
An industrial designer
How would they redesign the counter, bin or label so the right move is the easy one?
A warehouse operator
How would they run your stockroom? What gets counted, where does it live, who moves it?
A teacher
Your staff didn’t misbehave, they misunderstood. What did they actually hear, and when?
A pilot
Which steps belong on a checklist at the exact moment of need, instead of in someone’s memory?