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Our newsletter provides our latest thinking on how you can get better results from your investment in AI. Easy to read straight talk about AI and where it's going.

A Common Sense Systems practice

You’re investing in AI. Confirm it will pay off.

Common Sense AI is not a vendor page. Confirm means test the case, not guarantee the outcome. Where are you applying it, what limits the business now, and does this investment change that?

The work covers everything from a business case check to an honest next step.

Business case check

I check whether the AI work you already started can move anything the business actually cares about.

What to keep, stop, or prove

We name the one job worth proving next, and what to stop feeding.

Technical win vs business win

I separate a demo that works from a business that performs better.

An honest next step

You leave with a next step you can defend, including the option to stop.

You work directly with me. If the case is weak, I will say that.

John Sambrook, founder of Common Sense Systems

“I brought John Sambrook onto a risky and highly political project that had far-reaching consequences within our company. John found solutions to difficult problems, problems I could not have solved without him, thwarting doom over and over again. He produced documentation and code at a professional level I have rarely seen elsewhere in my thirty years of software engineering.”

Who I am

I am John Sambrook. I founded Common Sense Systems in 1996 in Kirkland, Washington. This practice exists because AI spend is easy to start and hard to finish honestly.

I work with owners who are already spending. I look at how the business actually runs, find the part that is stuck, and design a check that tells the truth about the investment.

How I work with AI

I don't just assess AI — I run it. Here is a recent check, start to finish.

PROVE

10 contracts. 134 hidden dilemmas. 4 in every one.

I analyzed ten nursing union contracts across Washington State. Every one contains the same four impossible dilemmas — and the usual fix (premium pay) pays for the symptom instead of resolving it. The same pattern hides in most businesses.

AI did the reading. I did the judgment.

Read the analysis

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you install an AI stack?

No. I am not here to sell you another tool. The question is whether the investment you already made — or are about to make — pays off in the business.

What does “confirm it will pay off” mean?

It means test the case. It does not mean I guarantee the outcome. If the case is weak, I will say that.

We already have a vendor.

Good. Then we can look at whether their work is changing anything that matters, or only producing slides.

What happens in the first conversation?

You tell me what you are applying AI to, what it is supposed to change, and how you would know. I tell you whether I can help, and what a first piece of work would look like.

Let’s talk

A first conversation is a look at the case, not a pitch. Tell me what you are applying AI to, what it is supposed to change, and how you would know.

Talk to John

“I brought John Sambrook onto a risky and highly political project that had far-reaching consequences within our company. John found solutions to difficult problems, problems I could not have solved without him, thwarting doom over and over again. He produced documentation and code at a professional level I have rarely seen elsewhere in my thirty years of software engineering.”

Bob Alexander, Principal Software Architect, Fujifilm Sonosite

“I've run enough companies to know the difference between competitive and unfair. At Applied Microsystems we had an unfair advantage — and one of the clearest examples came from John Sambrook and the outstanding engineers he assembled and led. HP could sell tools. We could deliver the truth.”