AI Archives

Building Block: Small Problems Don’t Stay Small

Most business problems don’t become serious overnight.

They start with something small.

A missed deadline. An unhappy customer. A team member struggling with an assignment. A project that’s running a little over budget.

We notice the warning signs but convince ourselves things will work out.

Sometimes they do.

Often, they don’t.

One lesson I’ve learned from running a business for more than three decades is that problems rarely improve simply because we ignore them.

In fact, waiting usually makes them more expensive and more difficult to resolve.

Today, AI gives us new ways to identify potential problems before they become serious.

It can analyze project data, flag unusual patterns, identify missed commitments, and help us anticipate risks.

That’s valuable.

But recognizing a problem and doing something about it are two very different things.

AI won’t make the uncomfortable phone call to a customer. It won’t have a difficult conversation with an employee. And it can’t take responsibility for a decision that didn’t work out.

Those responsibilities still belong to us.

When something goes wrong, I’ve found three practices especially useful:

Communicate early. Bad news rarely improves with age. Customers and employees appreciate knowing what’s happening before they’re surprised.
Bring solutions, not just problems. Identify a few options, recommend the best one, and explain your reasoning.
Treat problems as opportunities. Handling a difficult situation well can actually strengthen relationships and build trust.

None of this is complicated.

But it does require discipline, accountability, and occasionally an uncomfortable conversation.

The good news? Those conversations are usually much easier when the problem is still small.

From The 100: Slaying Monsters Early

In The 100: Building Blocks for Business Leadership, I wrote:

“Share problems early, which allows you to ‘slay monsters’ while they’re still small and relatively easy to overpower.”

The Building Block also emphasizes anticipating challenges and bringing well-considered solutions when raising an issue.

That advice remains just as relevant today.

AI may help us spot the monsters sooner.

It’s still our job to slay them.

Building Block: If Your Meetings Don’t Lead to Action, Why Have Them?

Most business leaders have attended meetings that could have been emails.

And probably a few emails that should never have been sent.

Meetings are expensive. When eight people spend an hour together, that’s eight hours of time the company will never get back.

So what did the company get in return?

Today, AI makes that question even more important.

AI can summarize project updates, generate reports, capture meeting notes, and identify action items. Information that once required a 60-minute meeting can often be shared in minutes.

That’s good news.

But it also means we need to rethink why we’re meeting in the first place.

In my experience, the most productive meetings accomplish three things:

Create alignment. Everyone understands the priorities and what success looks like.
Solve problems. Issues are raised, discussed, and resolved before they become bigger problems.
Establish accountability. People leave knowing what needs to happen, who’s responsible, and when it’s due.

At Intertech, we’ve long used daily huddles and other regularly scheduled meetings to keep people connected and focused. The structure matters because it creates a predictable opportunity to surface issues and maintain momentum.

But structure alone doesn’t make a meeting valuable.

A meeting without a purpose is just a calendar invitation.

AI gives us an opportunity to eliminate much of the administrative work surrounding meetings. Let’s use that time to have better conversations, make better decisions, and spend fewer hours sitting in meetings that accomplish little.

The goal isn’t more meetings.

It’s more progress.

From The 100: Making Meetings Matter

Building Block #86 emphasizes that meetings deserve the same intentional approach as any other investment of company resources.

The principle is especially relevant today. Technology can make meetings more efficient, but it cannot replace the leadership, judgment, and accountability that make them worthwhile.

Before scheduling your next meeting, ask one simple question:

What should be different when this meeting is over?

If you can’t answer that, perhaps you don’t need the meeting.

Building Block: AI Should Give Us Time Back—Not More Work

One of the great promises of AI is productivity.

Emails written faster. Meetings summarized automatically. Research completed in minutes. Reports created in seconds.

So here’s a question:

What are we doing with all the time we’re saving?

There’s a danger that AI simply allows us to cram more activity into an already crowded day.

Answer more emails.

Attend more meetings.

Produce more reports.

Complete more tasks.

That’s not necessarily productivity. It’s just being busy at a higher speed.

The real opportunity with AI is to eliminate or reduce lower-value work so people can spend more time on things that matter.

For leaders, that might mean thinking about strategy, developing employees, talking with customers, or simply having uninterrupted time to think.

For technical professionals, it might mean spending less time writing routine code and more time understanding requirements, designing solutions, and solving difficult business problems.

There’s also a personal side to this.

If technology helps you finish the day’s work earlier, you don’t necessarily need to fill the newly available hour with another hour of work.

Go exercise.

Have dinner with your family.

Read a book.

Or do absolutely nothing productive. There’s a novel idea.

Technology should help us become more effective—not simply more occupied.

Building Block: Doing Less Can Produce More

In The 100: Building Blocks for Business Leadership, I wrote about what I called the “activity traps” that consume time and energy while accomplishing surprisingly little.

I also described Stephen Covey’s familiar metaphor of putting the “big rocks” into the bucket first. For me, those big rocks included important meetings, daily huddles, family time, and exercise. Everything else—the sand—filled the space around them.

My takeaway then was straightforward:

“Learn to smile and explain that the secret is working smarter, not longer.”

AI gives us perhaps the greatest opportunity we’ve had in decades to put that principle into practice.

The goal shouldn’t be to see how much more work AI allows us to squeeze into a day.

The goal should be to accomplish what matters—and get some of our day back.

Building Block: AI Can Speed Up Hiring. Don’t Let It Rush the Decision

AI is making hiring faster.

It can screen resumes, summarize interviews, identify skills, generate interview questions, and compare candidates in seconds.

That’s useful.

But there’s an important distinction between speeding up the hiring process and speeding up the hiring decision.

I’ve made enough hiring decisions over the years to know the difference.

When you’re short-handed, an open position feels like a problem that needs to be solved immediately. A candidate checks most of the boxes, everyone is busy, and it’s tempting to say, “Good enough.”

That’s usually when trouble starts.

AI can help us gather and organize more information about candidates. It can’t determine whether someone will take ownership when things go wrong, work well with your team, earn a client’s trust, or live your company’s values when nobody is watching.

Those things still require human judgment.

Use AI to eliminate administrative work. Use it to prepare better questions. Use it to make your hiring process more thorough and efficient.

Then slow down for the part that matters most: deciding who joins your team.

Getting the right person a week later is almost always better than getting the wrong person tomorrow.

Building Block: Hiring Slowly Is Still Good Business

In The 100: Building Blocks for Business Leadership, I wrote about a lesson I’d learned the hard way:

“Avoid hasty hires.”

I noted that when we’ve justified hiring someone because of an especially heavy workload, that person might provide short-term relief but fail to work out over the long term. The lesson was simple: take the time to thoroughly evaluate someone before inviting them onto your team.

A decade later, technology has dramatically changed hiring.

The principle hasn’t.

Let AI make the process faster.

Don’t let it make you impatient.

Building Block: Great Leaders Solve Problems Early

AI is incredibly good at solving problems.

Unfortunately…

It will happily solve the wrong one.

Businesses often jump straight into implementation before asking whether they’re addressing the real issue.

The result?

Elegant solutions.

Poor outcomes.

The best leaders spend more time defining the problem than discussing the solution.

Once everyone agrees on the problem, execution becomes dramatically easier.

Speed is valuable.

Direction is essential.