Arguing About the Wrong Thing
The meeting is about which model and which vendor. Those choices matter less than the room thinks. The scarce resource was never the technology.
You have sat in this meeting. The whole argument is about tools. Which foundation model. Which vendor. Build the copilot or buy it. Everyone leaves feeling like a decision was made.
The choices matter, a little. But they do not decide your future, and pretending they do has a cost. It lets a room full of capable people feel busy while the company stands still.
The scarce resource was never the technology. It is the person who can hold a new capability in one hand and a real piece of work in the other and see how one should reshape the other. That person needs a name and a job.
I call the role the AI Product Partner, and it exists because of exactly that gap. The people who know what AI can now do usually do not understand the work that has to change. The people who understand the work usually do not know what just became possible. Nobody who could close the gap alone is standing in it.
Both words are chosen on purpose
Partner, because this is not a ticket taker. The relationship is not tell me which tool to build. It is help me understand the outcome and the real work, and we will decide together what should exist. The job is one part enablement: someone who lives in the tools, carries real empathy for how hard it is to change how a person works, and spends the day teaching people to change themselves.
Product, because a demonstration is a comfortable way to lie to yourself. A prototype proves something is possible. A product makes it a repeatable part of how the institution works. The other part of the job is translating what teaching cannot solve into clear build requirements, and handing them to a dynamic, innovative engineering team to make real.
Not a new tool, a new seat
So the first move is not a purchase. It is to put a person at that intersection, give them real standing across Permission, People, and Programs, and let them reframe the work instead of taking tickets. As capability gets cheaper and more abundant, deciding what to do with it is the scarce skill, and it will not commoditize.
Where do your best people spend their days on work beneath them? Name that one function, and put a person at the seam this quarter, with the standing to change the work and not just field requests for it. The full role is on The AI Product Partner.
Cheers,
-Titus
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