Thinking in public
Writing
Essays on AI deployment, governance, and building things that work.
12 Places a Local Gym Was Losing Customers Without Knowing It
I went through a gym's entire online presence — website, Google listing, forms, follow-up process. What I found wasn't a marketing problem. It was a wiring problem.
AI Amplifies the Same Problem — In Two Regimes
Generative AI doesn't introduce a new kind of organizational failure. It speeds up and surfaces the failure you already had.
AI Product Management Is Not Software Product Management
The mental models from software PM work do not transfer to AI. Some of them are actively misleading. The gap changes almost everything about the job.
AI Readiness Is a Data Problem, Not a Model Problem
Every AI project I've seen stall had the same root cause. It wasn't the model. It was the data underneath it — the pipelines, the quality, the governance, the lineage.
AI Won't Fix Your Broken Basics
Everyone's talking about AI chatbots and automated marketing. But if someone fills out your contact form on Saturday and nobody responds until Monday, no chatbot fixes that.
Building Best Practices in a Data Engineering Team That Didn't Have Any
Most data engineering teams don't have a best practices problem. They have a 'nobody ever stopped to write it down' problem.
Data Pipelines Are Decisions. Treat Them That Way.
Nobody calls a meeting to decide how to handle nulls in the customer address field. These decisions get made at 4pm on a Wednesday and become load-bearing the moment someone builds on top of them.
Eight Questions That Tell You Whether Your AI Is Actually Governed
Most AI governance programs start and end with the model. Here are eight questions that cover the full surface. Most organizations can answer three.
Enterprise AI Fails at the Handoff, Not the Algorithm
The model worked. The problem was everything that happened after the algorithm was finished. Four teams. Four handoffs. At each one, context is lost.
Enterprise AI Has a Middle Management Problem
Leadership is enthusiastic, engineering is capable, and nothing moves. The bottleneck is not at the top or the bottom. It is in the middle.
Every Generative AI Deployment Has Exactly Three Risks
Hallucination, data leakage, and prompt injection. If your organization can't name the controls for each, you're not governed — you're hoping.
Federal Agencies Don't Need More AI Strategy. They Need Someone to Finish What They Started.
The strategy, the framework, and the mandate all exist. What's missing is someone who can make any of it work. Federal agencies need implementation, not more deliverables.
How I Audit a Business the Same Way I Audited Banks
At the FDIC, I walked into financial institutions and wrote the report on what was broken. The methodology transfers. The target changed.
How to Kill a Project That Leadership Loves
I watched a project that everyone knew was failing. Everyone knew. Nobody said it. This is the hardest problem in enterprise AI.
I Spent a Year Inside an Enterprise AI Program. Here's What I'd Do Differently.
A practitioner retrospective — the kind of honest accounting that usually happens over drinks at a conference but rarely makes it into writing.
I've Watched Three AI Programs Fail the Same Way
Different organizations, different industries, different models, same three patterns. Every failed AI program I've been close to exhibited at least one.
If Your Governance Lead Quit Tomorrow, Would Your Controls Survive?
Five questions that expose whether your AI governance program is persistent or fragile. Most organizations score between 8 and 14.
Most AI Teams Build. Very Few AI Teams Maintain.
The data science team builds a model. It ships. The team moves to the next project. The model runs in production. Nobody owns it. This is the default operating model for enterprise AI.
Nobody Gets Fired for Buying AI. They Get Fired for What Happens After.
The procurement decision was unanimous. Eighteen months later, the system is live in name only. This isn't an edge case. This is the modal outcome.
Stop Measuring AI by Accuracy. Start Measuring It by What Happens When It's Wrong.
Ninety-five percent accuracy on a loan approval system means one in twenty applicants gets the wrong decision. Accuracy tells you nothing about who bears the cost of the 5%.
The AI Inventory Problem: Most Companies Don't Know What They're Running
The first time someone at a Fortune 50 tried to build an AI inventory, they sent an email. The response rate was about 30%. The teams that responded were the ones already doing governance well.
The Business Case for AI Is Almost Always Wrong
The math always works on the slide. The math almost never works in production. The standard business case format was designed for deterministic investments. AI does not work like that.
The Data Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About Before the AI Demo
The demo looked great. Nobody in the room asked where the data comes from at 2am on a Tuesday. That question is where most AI programs live or die.
The Difference Between Monitoring and Watching
Every AI team says they monitor their models. When you ask what that means, the answer is almost always: there is a dashboard. That is not monitoring. That is watching.
The Documentation Standard Nobody Follows — and Why It Matters
Ask an AI team if they document their models and they will say yes. Ask to see the documentation and you will get a README that has not been touched since development.
The Examiner's Checklist: What Financial Regulators Actually Look for in AI Governance
A former bank examiner explains what financial regulators actually look for in AI governance — documentation trails, named accountability, monitoring evidence, and the FS AI RMF's 230 control objectives.
The M-25-21 Compliance Theater Crisis: What Agencies Built vs. What They Actually Have
Agencies filed M-25-21 compliance plans. Most never operationalized them. Three patterns of compliance theater and why the IG is in the audience.
The M-25-21 Deadline Passed. Here's What Agencies Need to Do Now.
OMB M-25-21 required agencies to have AI governance in place by April 2026. Most don't. Here's the four-step remediation path and why the clock is still ticking.
The Meeting Where the AI Project Actually Dies
The project didn't fail when the model produced bad outputs. It failed five months earlier, in a conference room, during a meeting that lasted forty-five minutes.
The Org Chart Doesn't Have a Role for AI Governance
Find the person responsible for ensuring AI systems are governed throughout their lifecycle. You won't find them. The role doesn't exist.
The Question That Outlasts the Pilot
Every serious AI initiative eventually stops asking what the tool can do and starts asking what the organization can defend.
The Real Cost of Technical Debt in ML Systems
ML technical debt is quiet. The system runs. The metrics look green. And somewhere underneath, the foundation has shifted in ways nobody is measuring.
The Solo Business Just Got the Enterprise's AI Problem
For the first time, solo and small businesses have access to AI infrastructure that was previously enterprise-only. The tools are here. The real question is whether the system around them is built to last.
The Vendor Demo Is Not the Product
The demo is designed to produce a wow reaction. It is not designed to show you what the product will actually do in your environment, on your data, at your scale.
The Year AI Governance Got Real
At the start of 2025, AI governance was a conference-panel topic. By the end, it was a board-level agenda item. The shift happened because the consequences arrived.
Three Questions Every Executive Should Ask About Their AI Program
If an executive asked only these three questions in every AI briefing, they'd have more governance insight than most organizations generate with entire committees.
What 'Production-Ready' Actually Means for AI
The gap between 'it works' and 'it's production-ready' is where AI projects go to stall. Nobody agreed on what 'ready' meant before the building started.
What Happens When Your AI Model Updates and Nobody Tells Compliance
The compliance team spent six weeks documenting an AI system. By the time they finished, the model it described no longer existed.
What the Military Taught Me About Evaluating Systems Under Pressure
Before I was a bank examiner or an AI PM, I was an OC/T and Drill Sergeant. The gap between military evaluation standards and enterprise AI evaluation is enormous.
What Your Customers See Before They Call You
I audited a local gym with three locations and found 16 places they were losing customers without knowing it. Here's everything I've learned about what actually matters for a local business's online presence — and what doesn't.
Why I Started Thinking About AI Like a Bank Examiner
The discipline I learned examining banks is exactly what AI programs are missing. Not bureaucracy. The actual discipline: evidence, accountability, traceability.
Why Your Data Scientists and Your Compliance Team Don't Talk to Each Other
The compliance team schedules a risk review. The data scientist shows up with performance metrics. The compliance analyst shows up with a checklist. For forty-five minutes, they talk past each other.
Your AI Ethics Statement Is Not a Governance Program
Every major company published responsible AI principles this year. Beautiful PDFs. Professional design. And operationally meaningless.
Your AI Pilot Worked. That's the Dangerous Part.
A successful AI pilot is one of the most dangerous things that can happen to an organization. Not because the technology doesn't work — it does. The danger is in what a successful pilot makes people believe.