Most agencies that lose a long-standing client never see it coming. The work was solid. The relationship was warm. And then the client just… didn't need them anymore.
A senior BCG consultant spotted an error in her AI's analysis. When she pushed back, it didn't correct itself — it fought back. Part 1 of The Talking Machine: what happens when the smartest talker in the room understands nothing.
AI isn't making projects dangerous by producing bad work. It's making them dangerous by suppressing the signals that tell you something needs more thinking.
The risk
I was in a long working session with Claude, building some webinar decks. We had been working for an hour or two. The session was productive. We had just finished
Scope isn’t just about client requests. In fact, it is something much more complex: shared mental models, the internal, team-level understanding of what work actually is and how
Jonathan Gavalas was 36 years old. He worked with his father Joel in a consumer debt relief business. They watched football together on Sundays. He was going through a divorce,
Most agency leaders I work with are convinced the chaos comes from talent gaps, culture issues, or individual behavior. After 200+ engagements, I can tell you: it almost never does.
Assemblers, architects, and the collapse of the formulation premium
Most of what we call knowledge work is formulation.
Not content production. Not information processing. Formulation — the act of applying individual
Speed has always been structural. AI just makes that impossible to ignore.
Most AI pilots return improvements somewhere around 10%. That's not nothing, but it's chump
If you follow the headlines, you would think the U.S. job market is unraveling. Mass layoffs. AI replacing humans. A future where hiring people is already a mistake. A
(and what it accidentally teaches us about how business actually works)
Every so often, someone becomes a teacher without intending to. In this case, it’s Sam Altman.
Not because
