Blog
Notes & ideas
What the research actually says, what breaks when you put these tools on real work, and what to do about it.
October 2026
Professional Practice
A risk review that took two to ten days now takes five minutes. Ask three questions first.
A Philippine telecoms group reports huge time savings from three AI assistants. The figures are its own estimates, and the three questions to ask of any such number are the real lesson.
27 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
AI Basics
84% of small business owners use AI, says Meta. The number to read is 86%.
Meta's survey of almost 4,000 small business owners says AI use is nearly universal. The useful finding is that most want guidance, not access.
26 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
AI Basics
Malaysia is paying for Coursera for 100,000 people. Most of the popular courses are not about AI.
In three weeks 12,900 Malaysians enrolled in 43,000 courses. Three of the four most popular are about management and data, not AI.
23 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
Professional Practice
80% of large European firms say an AI incident reached their board
An IBM-commissioned survey of 3,221 executives finds most large firms had an AI problem reach the top. Fewer than half changed their rules afterwards.
22 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
Tools & Techniques
A New Zealand firm asked ChatGPT about itself and got its fees wrong
An MIT Sloan Management Review case shows AI assistants giving confident, wrong answers about a real company. You can run the same check in five minutes.
21 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
Professional Practice
Anthropic now expects a qualified person to be able to overrule the AI
Anthropic's updated usage policy, effective 12 November, asks for a person with authority to change the AI's advice on decisions that affect livelihoods.
20 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
Professional Practice
86% of Singapore's workers use AI. Only 37% have been trained.
Singapore's 2026 workforce survey finds AI use at work almost universal and training a minority. Your team is probably in the same position.
19 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
Professional Practice
I prepared a week of content a day early. Here is what ran without me.
Travelling meant producing this week's five posts a day early. It sorted my routine into three piles: what runs alone, what needs judgement, and what needs confirming.
16 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
Case Study
Wipro says AI freed the work of 20,000 people. Read the training figure first.
Wipro says AI added the output of 20,000 people, and that they were redeployed, not let go. The number is contested. The decision behind it is one every manager will face.
15 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
AI Basics
Same tool, opposite results: 760,000 students show the choice every team is making
The largest study of AI use in learning found students who let AI do the task scored lower, and those who used it to learn scored highest. Your team faces the same choice.
14 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
Tools & Techniques
Ask what the AI can cost in a month, and what happens when it gets there
A licence costs the same however much it is used. Pay-as-you-go AI costs whatever happens overnight. Before your team switches one on, ask for a limit that stops it.
13 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
Professional Practice
Singapore's financial regulator says you answer for the AI inside your suppliers' software
MAS has told every financial institution in Singapore that it remains accountable for AI it buys from someone else. Most teams' first AI arrived exactly that way.
12 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
Tools & Techniques
My research agent has been locked out of OpenAI's website since 19 August
Every morning since 19 August, OpenAI's website has turned our research agent away. How it copes is a habit worth copying: label every claim it did not read itself.
9 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
Professional Practice
The AI agent is moving into the team's shared workspace. Nobody has said who checks its work.
Microsoft and OpenAI both put AI agents into the team's shared space within a week. Neither launch said who checks the work. That part was always going to be the manager's job.
8 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
AI Basics
Fewer than 4 in 100 Singapore firms have AI in their core operations. You have not missed the boat.
Singapore is the region's most advanced AI market, yet only 3.8% of its firms have built AI into core operations. Most are still trying chat tools, which is where the real work starts.
7 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
Professional Practice
Budget for the checking, not just the tool
The teams furthest ahead on AI in Asia still review 86% of what it produces, and save seven hours a week doing it. The checking is now part of the work, so cost it.
6 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
Case Study
Takeda's head of R&D did not get a digital lead. He was the digital lead.
At Takeda, AI was not handed to IT or a champion. Every function head owned it, and was asked about it in the same review as the numbers. That part costs nothing to copy.
5 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
Case Study
We wrote Monday's post on Sunday. Nobody had the job of publishing it.
Five posts were finished and ready. Monday's went live nearly three hours late, because moving them between two systems was nobody's job.
2 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
Professional Practice
The department you thought was safest is the one being rebuilt
Fifteen chief marketing officers describe what AI is doing to their function. The constraint they name is hiring, and the measures they relied on are failing.
1 Oct 2026 · 4 min read
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