Ways We Give Away Our Thinking
It starts slowly...
Your org is deciding right now, mostly by accident, how much of its thinking to outsource. I've spent thirty years on the other side of that line, and I can show you what it looks like from there.
The four scenarios:
- Unchecked Summaries. Ever heard the advice that whoever takes notes of a meeting has way more power than most people realize?
- The AI First Draft that Becomes Final. First you ask AI for a critique. Then you ask it for a draft. Then you stop checking. Then you stop thinking.
- The Sawn-Off Ladder. At my first real job at New Science Associates, we would have Stuffing Parties to put the new issue of our newsletters in envelopes, attaching labels that reminded us who our clients were.
- Nobody's Consensus. My writings have always gone out with my signature. Now we're sourcing material that's smart, but not provenanced... and thus not traceable to a responsible person.
Cognitive Offloading vs Cognitive Surrender. Do the former, avoid the latter.
Each of these steps toward surrender is a convenience, adopted for good reasons. But they add up.
Now that you can see these forces, how do you want to shape them?
This article is cross-posted on Substack here and LinkedIn here. It's also here in my Brain.