Writing

Friday's Frontline

One post every Friday since January 2026, on AI and on leading the people doing the work. Written from inside the building, published here in full.

37 posts · weeks 1–37 · since January 16, 2026

Week 37 · AI · October 2, 2026

Nine Blank Stares

A while back, when we were building towards maturity at Cox, I sat in one of our first AI Council reviews. Ten of us in the room: strategy, engineering, security, legal, product, infrastructure, data privacy, me.

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Week 36 · AI · September 25, 2026

Act Like a Business

When I was the buyer, I rarely lacked for good options. The problem was that I had several, and they were all close. Feature by feature, the lead swung week to week. One pulled ahead on Monday, another by Friday.

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Week 35 · AI · September 18, 2026

Same Day Wheelchair

In 2019 I needed a wheelchair by Thursday morning. It was Wednesday, I had no time to go find one, and Thursday was going to be hard without it.

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Week 34 · Leadership · September 11, 2026

The Constant

People keep asking me what they should do. About the job, the offer, the leap, the stay. They come at it like a math problem about risk: how much they can stomach, what unknown is waiting on each side.

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Week 33 · AI · September 4, 2026

Day Nine

For three years, startups pitched us. Founders showed up with demos galore. I was the buyer they wanted: budget owner, decision maker, governance and implementation owner all in one.

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Week 32 · AI · August 28, 2026

Is the Brief Dead?

Every campaign in the history of marketing started with a brief. The document you write before anything happens: the audience, the message, the goal, handed off so the work can begin. It is the first ritual of the craft.

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Week 31 · AI · August 21, 2026

My Way or the Highway?

This week, the company I have spent years inside became a different company. Same buildings, same people, a new name over the door. I am stepping away from it soon, and stepping away clears your eyes.

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Week 30 · AI · August 14, 2026

The Fries Are the Meal

Everybody wants the burger. The AI burger. The big, juicy model everyone at the table is pointing at. Order the AI. Get the AI. Put the AI on a slide. Nobody orders the fries. They assume it comes with the burger. Silly customer.

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Week 29 · Leadership · August 7, 2026

Might As Well...

Jump. When was the last time you did? Both feet off the ground, like you meant it. Van Halen built a hit on it in '84, Kris Kross did it again in '92, and I would bet you have to stop and think about it. Mine was months.

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Week 28 · Leadership · July 31, 2026

The Far Corner

For years I parked in the same spot. Top floor of the deck, far corner, the longest walk to the building. Every office I ever worked, whatever the job, whatever the title, same choice. Take the hard spot. Make the walk.

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Week 27 · AI · July 24, 2026

Noun or Adjective

Two years ago, the week of the Fourth, I was trying to get a few years of focus onto a single page. Somewhere in that mess I wrote a line to my team that I have not been able to shake. Digital is not an organization.

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Week 26 · AI · July 17, 2026

Nits, Gnats, and Notes

This is the twenty-sixth of these. Halfway through a year of Fridays. The question I get most is a version of the same one. Did you write this, or did the AI. People ask it kindly, and they ask because they actually want to know.

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Week 25 · AI · July 10, 2026

The Farmer Kept the Farm

The country turned 250 last weekend. The fighting had started fifteen months before there was a country to fight for. On the morning of April 19, 1775, about seventy men stood on Lexington Green.

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Week 24 · AI · June 26, 2026

The Part That Holds

Nobody takes a picture of a foundation. The ribbon-cutting photo is always the building. The glass, the lobby, the name over the door.

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Week 23 · AI · June 19, 2026

AI Broke the Rungs

Twenty years ago I was a young consultant, about a month into a new client, sitting across from their CTO. He asked what value we were going to create. So I told him. Facts, figures, data points, projections.

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Week 22 · Leadership · June 12, 2026

If You See Something, Say Something

A few years back I spent three days in the markets. Omaha. Council Bluffs (a retail store in Iowa if you're keeping track). Oklahoma City. New Orleans.

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Week 21 · Leadership · June 5, 2026

Calm is Contagious

I had a meeting in three hours that I knew was going to start sideways. I'd been told the other side was bringing knives. Maybe swords. The anticipation was already consuming me. Morning routine started… coffee in bed.

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Week 20 · Leadership · May 29, 2026

Take My Picture

Marshall Faulk walked into the lobby and tried to get in our photo. This was 2007. We are at the NFL Studios in Culver City, CA, every day.

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Week 19 · AI · May 22, 2026

The Real Polish

Last week I told you polish is the trap. This week, the real polish. When optimization IS warranted (the existential-constraint kind from last week), there's a way to do it that doesn't end in shrugs.

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Week 18 · AI · May 15, 2026

The Polish Trap

Last week I told you to build adjacent new products. This week is the harder part: we must keep reminding ourselves not to polish the old ones. Campaign & Creative was working. So was Brief Creation. Lead Validation.

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Week 17 · AI · May 8, 2026

1+1=3

"Where's the big value?" Leaders love to ask it. We know it's the wrong question. It pulls teams into scatter charts of use cases and POCs that die before they ship. We did the opposite.

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Week 16 · AI · May 1, 2026

The Handoff is Dead

The back-and-forth is a yesterday problem. For months I’ve been asking Claude what it remembered, or remembering on its behalf (yes, you can tell it to remember specific things, I know). I dictated specs.

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Week 15 · AI · April 24, 2026

Ask the Auditor

Anthropic announced a new model called Mythos a couple of weeks ago. They're not releasing it publicly.

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Week 14 · AI · April 17, 2026

The Gap

A few weeks ago, I was invited to close out a full day of AI executive learning hosted by a major consulting firm. A hundred senior leaders in the room - from financial services, healthcare, media, and beyond.

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Week 13 · AI · April 10, 2026

Best Side

I was standing at a wildly large grill on a beautiful day last Saturday – a balmy 72 Florida degrees, husking my 60th ear of corn, sweating through my shirt, going at it alone, having never…

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Week 12 · AI · April 3, 2026

Mozzarella Sticks

If you go to a restaurant and eat four fried mozzarella sticks, nobody thinks twice. It’s just an appetizer.

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Week 11 · AI · March 27, 2026

The Click

A colleague once told me about the moment in an evening when everything just feels right. The conversation, the energy, the people - all of it clicks into place. It doesn't last forever. But you know it when you're in it.

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Week 10 · Leadership · March 20, 2026

Same Mountain, Different Climb

This past weekend I built two agents and checked the code in to my git repo while I was skiing. From a ski lift in Winter Park, CO. I'm not saying that to flex.

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Week 9 · Leadership · March 13, 2026

I Don't Believe in Goals

I don't believe in goals. I know how that sounds. Before you brush past this post - I'm not talking about organizational targets, OKRs, or the commitments that move a business forward. Those matter. I mean personal goals.

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Week 8 · AI · March 6, 2026

Unthink

Ben Franklin probably had a British accent. His father was born in England. All four grandparents were born in England. Franklin himself spent years living in London.

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Week 7 · AI · February 27, 2026

The Shape of What's Coming

You've probably heard of T-shaped skills. One deep spike of expertise, supported by a broad base of general knowledge. The gold standard for decades. I've never been T-shaped. Not really.

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Week 6 · AI · February 20, 2026

C's Get Degrees

Last week I wrote about the K-Curve - the widening gap between people who engage with AI and those who don't, despite equal access. I promised I'd tell you why I think it's happening and that you might not like it.

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Week 5 · AI · February 13, 2026

The K-Curve

Someone at our company recently ran an experiment. They took an analysis task and did it two ways: the way they'd always done it, and with AI assistance. The traditional approach took about five hours.

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Week 4 · Leadership · February 5, 2026

Don't Carve Your Name in the Desk

I once worked with a DBA who carved his name into his desk. Not metaphorically. Literally. He took something sharp and etched his name into the plastic folding table where he sat.

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Week 3 · AI · January 30, 2026

Headlines are for Heroes

In 1934, J. Edgar Hoover got word that his agents had located John Dillinger. Before confirming the capture, before validating the intelligence, he went to the press. Headlines declared victory. Dillinger slipped away.

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Week 2 · AI · January 23, 2026

Lessons from Hoover

In 1936, Congressman John Hollis challenged J. Edgar Hoover during House appropriations hearings: "You're asking for federal funding to build the FBI, but you've never made an arrest yourself." Hoover had no good answer.

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Week 1 · AI · January 16, 2026

AI & Troy

I've been thinking about Troy lately. You know the story - impenetrable walls, a city so fortified that it took ten years and a wooden horse to breach it.

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These run on LinkedIn first, every Friday morning, and land here after. Follow along there to read them as they go out.