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AI decisions, examined in depth

Longer takes on the topics that matter for AI leadership. Each article builds on a LinkedIn post with added context, evidence, and frameworks.

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Hand-drawn ink and crayon editorial illustration on a warm cream background. A shallow rectangular office letter tray sits centred on plain cream ground, seen from slightly above and a little to the left, its moulded plastic drawn in flat mid steel blue with heavy charcoal outlines and a wide scooped curve cut into the centre of its low front wall. The tray is heaped well above its walls with a thick untidy pile of loose white paper sheets, drawn as ragged overlapping edges that spill out past the tray on both sides, with one larger sheet laid flat across the top of the pile. Resting on that top sheet, just left of centre, is a small pair of reading glasses with warm amber tortoiseshell frames, closed, its arms folded in across the lenses. A loose charcoal shadow falls to the right of the tray and scattered charcoal dashes suggest the surface to its left. No text and no people.
Strategy & ROI 4 min read

The Check That Left With the Afternoon

A McKinsey case describes a distributor whose system reads public building permits and drafts the sales outreach. The work it removed was somebody's afternoon, and an afternoon is never only one job: while a person was assembling the material, they were also reading it. That reading was a control nobody had written down, and it leaves with the work.

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Hand-drawn ink and crayon editorial illustration on a warm cream background. A small wooden rowing boat painted pale steel blue rests right way up on two plain wooden sawhorses, seen from the side and slightly above, filling most of the frame, its planked hull outlined in charcoal with a thwart and a stern seat visible inside. On the ground by the right-hand trestle stands a small open tin of amber paint with a brush leaning in it, a patch of amber on the stern seat and two amber spills on the ground beside the tin. Loose blue wash and charcoal hatching suggest the ground. No people, no water, no text.
Building 9 min read

Don't Build What You Can't Keep

McKinsey's 2026 survey found 32% of respondents saying their organization decided against buying at least one software product or feature because it could be built with coding agents. The companion post argued that the buy rule grew a second half. This article does the three things the post could not: reads the survey's size gap honestly, sorts builds into the three kinds that need different rules, and shows how to price what keeping a built tool costs every month.

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Hand-drawn ink and crayon editorial illustration on a warm cream background. A steel blue metal office filing cabinet with three closed drawers stands in three-quarter view, filling most of the frame, each drawer fitted with a small recessed label holder and a tubular handle. More than a dozen small yellow paper notes are taped flat across its front and left side at slight angles, several curling at the corners, and every one of them is blank. A loosely hatched grey shadow spreads across the ground beneath the cabinet.
Building 7 min read

Cheap to Write, Expensive to Keep

A system that remembers across more than one layer has a stratum you can delete with no consequence and a stratum that takes everything with it. Cost asymmetry moves important knowledge into the cheap one without anyone deciding it. This is the evidence for why that happens, and why better writing tools do not fix it.

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Hand-drawn ink and crayon editorial illustration on a warm cream background, in steel blue with two small mustard yellow marks. A single tall wooden ladder stands upright and roughly centred in the frame, seen straight on, its two rails drawn as rough weathered poles with visible grain and dark charcoal outlines. The left rail leans very slightly inward toward the top so the ladder narrows as it rises. Eight evenly spaced horizontal rungs run between the rails, each a thick blue-grey bar with pale highlights along its upper edge. The top end of each rail is capped with a small mustard yellow mark. The ladder stands on a low mound of loose blue scrubby ground drawn with short scratchy strokes, its two feet planted a little apart, and a soft pale blue shadow spreads across the ground to the right. The rest of the background is empty cream. No text appears in the image.
Workforce 8 min read

What Stays Expensive

The peer-reviewed version of a landmark AI productivity study found the gains landed on the least skilled and quality slipped slightly for the most skilled. That is not a productivity result. It is a repricing of what you have been paying for.

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Hand-drawn ink and coloured-pencil illustration on a warm cream background. A small robot sits upright in a blue upholstered office chair with a padded high back, rolled arms and a five-spoke caster base. Its head is a plain pale box with two round black dot eyes and a short curved line for a mouth, with a round dark camera lens set into the left side. A segmented metal neck joins the head to the body. The robot wears a grey suit jacket over a white shirt with a bright orange tie, grey trousers and dark rounded shoes that rest flat on the ground. Skeletal metal hands rest on the arms of the chair. A light pencil shadow falls beneath the chair. No text appears in the image.
Governance 7 min read

Assessment or Echo

An agent's recommendation is assembled out of what it wrote down and how you asked. Neither of those is visible in the recommendation itself.

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Hand-drawn ink and coloured-pencil editorial illustration on a warm cream background. A large steel-blue wooden shipping crate stands in three-quarter view, filling most of the frame, its sides built from weathered vertical planks with dark metal brackets and bolts at each corner, resting on a pale wooden pallet. Hanging from the crate's top edge on a thin dark cord is a single small blank amber paper tag with a rounded top and a punched hole, dwarfed by the crate behind it and casting a short shadow on the planks. A light scatter of small dark flecks lies on the ground around the base. The rest of the frame is empty cream space.
Governance 8 min read

An Agent Is Not an App

Software waits. An agent acts. That single difference is why agent projects run on a hiring clock, and why the invoice is the wrong document to plan from.

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