The Second Pint

Neil asked me recently whether I thought I had actually discovered anything, or whether I had simply noticed something that had been obvious all along and everyone else had somehow missed.

I told him I honestly do not know. I still do not. Maybe the best ideas always feel obvious in hindsight. Maybe the useful skill is noticing them slightly earlier, then having the patience to test the noticing rather than turning it immediately into a slogan.

What I do know is that it started over a pint, with a small task app on a laptop and a feeling that I was suddenly looking at more capability than I quite knew what to do with. I thought the interesting part was that I could build faster. Then I thought it was that I could build cheaper.

As it turns out, I managed to be wrong twice, which at least shows a certain commitment to the process.

The interesting part is that creation is becoming abundant while judgement is not. That changes what experienced people can do. It changes what small businesses can attempt. It changes what internal teams can prove before asking for a budget. And it changes the cost of being wrong.

That last part may matter most, although I now think there is another question sitting beside it. I do not need to pretend I know the answer before I begin, and neither do you. I can admit uncertainty and make the uncertainty cheaper. Find the friction. Strip away what does not matter. Try something small enough to learn from. Prove what changed. Then decide what the evidence has earned. And when the thing genuinely gives time back, decide just as deliberately what that time is for.

Sometimes that means building, sometimes buying, sometimes hardening a tiny thing that became unexpectedly important and, occasionally, having the good sense to stop.

If you close this book feeling that you need an AI strategy, I have explained it badly.

If you close it thinking, “There is one stupid thing we have all learned to tolerate, and I could probably understand it properly and make it better,” then we are in business.

You do not need a transformation programme or a massive budget to make something better. You may not even need permission to begin understanding it.

What you do need, before any of that, is to understand it properly.

So find one thing, preferably something small enough to look almost irritatingly ordinary. Ask the person actually doing the work what gets in their way, then listen properly to the answer.

And, for the love of all things sensible, do not build the app until you know why it deserves to exist.

If that takes another pint, so be it.