Don’t Automate Chaos This week's newsletter is about a pattern I keep seeing when working with AI and automation. And truthfully, it's a pattern that I have seen for the last 30+ years building automations. Someone comes in excited about AI, and rightfully so. But before we talk about models, or architecture, or even budget, I start the discovery process with a deep dive into the existing process. And more often than not, that's where the resistance starts. AI is an amplifier. It doesn’t fix what’s broken. It scales it. And this week, almost every article I read circled back to this same truth: the foundational work (that many AI roadmaps skip because it "takes too long") is the work that determines whether the investment in automation pays off, or creates a new category of problem. So if you are looking to automate an existing process (company-wide, departmental, or individual), read through a few articles for additional context and ideas. A few key questions you'll want to answer are: Is it well documented? Are there known bottlenecks? Is the data trusted, or siloed, or only understood by one person with legacy context? These answers will give you a significant advantage over those who jump in without doing their due diligence first. | 
