Kinds of work, not a highlight reel
Kinds of work, not vendor case studies.
10 contracts. 134 hidden dilemmas. 4 in every one.
I analyzed ten Washington State nursing union contracts and found 134 built-in dilemmas — clauses where complying with one provision necessarily violates another. Four appear in all ten. The usual fix (premium pay) pays for the symptom instead of resolving the structure.
The pilot that never left the conference room
A team had a working demo and no owner for the live path. We named the job it was supposed to do, the person who would live with it, and the number that would move. Half the ideas died that afternoon. That was the win.
Tools nobody opened
Licenses were paid. Usage was a rounding error. The work was not “adopt AI.” It was that the job the tool claimed to do was not the job people actually had. We stopped the spend that was theater.
A technical success with a flat P&L
The model was fine. The business did not change. We wrote down what “better” would have to mean in money or time, and the project had to answer that or end.