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The Changing of the Tides: Navigating Work in the Age of AI and Erosion
Photo by Samuel Scrimshaw on Unsplash A Rising Undertow Last spring, the National Association of Business Economics surveyed 600 hiring managers and came back with a jaw‑dropper: more than half said applicants “couldn’t summarize a one‑page memo without AI help.” In the very same quarter, ChatGPT crossed a billion monthly users. If you picture modern…
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Modular Minds: How Technical Thinking Makes Stronger Organizations
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash Author’s Note Over the past few weeks we’ve talked about the dollars saved by building in‑house—how skipping a custom web‑app quote, avoiding a six‑figure SaaS renewal, or shipping a Power BI fix in days instead of weeks pays real, measurable dividends. We’ve also discussed the value of recognizing the people doing…
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The Convenience Trap: Why Borrowed Solutions Build Fragile Companies
Author’s Note Every time I teach someone to automate a daily task — or pitch a simple tool that quietly saves an hour a week — the same question always comes up: “Why should we spend hours or days building something that only saves minutes or hours?” I see the same question through a different…
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The Problems with Unicorns
Author’s Note Yes, “unicorn” is a ridiculous word. So are “guru,” “ninja,” and “wizard”—and we’re not here to glorify them. These labels get tossed around too casually in tech and corporate slang, usually as buzzword shorthand for undefined brilliance or vaguely heroic productivity. We’re using “unicorn” here not because it’s the most accurate, but because…
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AI Art: Ethics and the Misplaced Fury of a Disrupted Age
Author’s Note This isn’t a confession—and it isn’t a eulogy for AI art. It’s a line I’ve chosen to draw, and a prototype I’ve chosen to share—because refusing to use exploitative tools is only half a solution. The other half is creating an alternative: one built on consent, transparency, and the dignity of original work.…
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Clearing the Rubble: The Pre-Work of Real Culture
Dawn spills across the studio’s worn floorboards, dust motes drifting like slow sparks in the angled light. At the easel stands a painter—sleeves rolled, palette forgotten—taking stock of a canvas already heavy with other beginnings. Cracked pigments buckle in ridges; clots of color sit where inspiration once outran intention. He raises a palette knife and,…
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Designing for Trust: A Blueprint for the Organizations Worth Building
Designing for Trust: A Blueprint for the Organizations Worth Building Author’s Note If trust were visible, most org charts would look like seismic reports—fissures everywhere. That’s what the last five articles have made plain. We started by tracking where teams falter—authority hoarded instead of shared, incentives that reward performance theater over progress, systems that bury…
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Resourceful Humans: Why Loyalty Can’t Be Outsourced
A Quiet Exodus—The Anatomy of One “Small” Decision When Jessica resigned, the exit interview lasted six polite minutes. HR dutifully recorded “better compensation” and “career growth” as the official reasons, yet the subtext was louder: You noticed every email praising my extra hours, but not the real-world cost of those hours. Inflation had eroded her…
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The Unmaintainable Future—Or Not
We’ve been automating labor for millennia—but only now can we skip understanding completely. Millwrights in ancient Persia and medieval Europe captured the steady push of wind and water to grind grain and saw lumber—turning the brute labor of entire villages into the quiet arc of a wheel. Coal and steam amplified that leverage; the Industrial…
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The Cost of Counting the Wrong Things
When the Numbers Lie Open the quarterly dashboard at almost any large company and you’ll see green lights everywhere: tickets closed ahead of schedule, calls answered in under thirty seconds, 120 percent of the sales target achieved. On paper it all looks beautiful—until you talk to the people who live behind the numbers. They describe broken…
Abstract Foundations 