AI made you informed. It didn't make you decided.
Read time: 6 minutes
It's easy to get informed now, really easy.
You can sit down with Claude or ChatGPT and in twenty minutes know more about a topic than you would have after a week of Googling three years ago. I use Claude constantly. Like, a lot. It's one of the best thinking tools I've ever had access to.
But what I keep running into, both in my own work and with clients, is that being informed and being decided are two very different things.
How are decisions made? How do you make decisions? Sometimes we just go with our gut. Other times we really analyze the pros and cons. One of my favorite methods to make tough decisions is to use the IRAC method (that they engrain in you in law school).
The IRAC Method
I - Issue: What question do we have to resolve?
R - Rule: What law, framework, or standard when applied helps solve it or inform it?
A - Analysis: Applying the facts of the unique setup of the issue to the applicable rules.
C - Conclusion: Where should we land and why
AI is incredible at the first few steps, Issue and Rule. It helps you spot things. It helps you think through how you'd approach them. It can even run Analysis if you give it good enough inputs and re-prompts. But that last step, the Conclusion… the "here's what I'm going to do” part… that's yours.
Something I think about a lot is that the quality of what AI gives you is directly tied to what you already know.
A novice can use AI and become partially informed about a topic they don't know much about. That's a win. If I need to change my faucet, and I know next to nothing about plumbing, I'd rather know what the average plumber recommends than go in blind. AI can fill that gap fast.
But a super user? Someone who's already dangerous in a certain space? AI makes them really dangerous. A doctor using AI to think through treatment options is a completely different situation than me using AI to figure out what happens when a bone breaks. I could probably learn the basics pretty quickly. I could sound informed. But I wouldn't trust myself to help someone who just broke their arm. The doctor would. Because the doctor has context, reps, and judgment that no AI chat session replaces.
When you're already dangerous in a space, AI is a multiplier. When you're just learning, AI speeds up the curve, but it doesn't skip the curve. You can't compress a four-year degree into a few curious weeks of chatting. Not really.
AI fills gaps with the average of what the knowledge base says about a topic. When you're starting from zero, the average is really helpful.
What about going from average to excellent? How do you do that? I think this is the gap the smart ones are paying attention to right now. The people who are humble enough and wise enough to know what they don't know.
Knowing the difference between "this sounds right" and "I'm sure this is right" isn’t easy. And it’s worth leaning into.
AI is going to lead to more people DIYing things. It already has and it should. But like any DIY, there's risk baked in. (Anyone else an HGTV fan and watched people ruin their homes when they believed they could just be a contractor all of a sudden?)
If I DIY my plumbing, it's going to be cheap. It's going to take a lot of time, and there's a real chance I end up with leaky pipes.
The question is always scope: what's the cost if this goes wrong?This is the part that doesn't get talked about enough. I can run a long, super thorough chat with AI. I can have good prompts, good reprompts, go back and forth for 30 minutes, and at the end of it, I'm left with a lot of possible directions. A lot of what feels like good options for the next step.
→ But which one do I choose? ←
Sometimes more information and more options actually leads to harder decisions. You'd think it would be the opposite. You’d think that more clarity should make it feel like an easier decision, but that's not how it feels. It often feels like more options leads to more second-guessing, more hesitation, and more wondering "What if I pick the wrong one?”.
At some point, we all have to decide. If we don't, life decides for us. Life keeps moving while we sit in the indecision.
A quick story…
I had a session recently with a client who was looking at acquiring a business. The client was 90% a greenlight on this. They told me they had thought a lot about it, done their research, even used ChatGPT Pro to help think through some of the details. The owner was looking to sell, seemed to like them, and the deal felt almost too good to be true. They were ready to move.
I'm guessing the chat went something like this:
"I'm thinking about acquiring a business. The owner wants to sell, and they're offering me what seems like a great deal. They seem to like me and I think it could really take things to the next level. I want to be smart about it though. Can you help me think through whether I should move forward?"
And the output probably went something like:
"That's exciting! Acquiring an existing business can be a fantastic growth opportunity. Since the seller seems motivated and the deal terms appear favorable, you're in a strong negotiating position. Here are a few things to consider before moving forward: make sure to review their financials, understand the customer base, and consult with a lawyer. But overall, if the numbers check out and it aligns with your vision, this could be a great move for you!"
Encouraging, supportive, and almost entirely useless for the actual decision.
We make decisions from our vantage point. What seems important to us might not seem important to another. This is where the importance of specialists lives.
My background helps me think a certain way just like yours does. We all have our strengths.
My background of a finance degree, a legal studies Masters from Pepperdine Law, and years spent in business consulting give me key context to solve problems around strategic business acquisitions. I had more than a few questions that needed answers before I would give a thumbs up. Questions that a chatbot would never think to ask or analyze unless it was prompted to do so, including:
What's the entity structure of the business she's acquiring?
What liabilities transfer with the sale?
Is this an asset purchase or a stock purchase?
What's the customer concentration risk?
What’s the brand image of the business being acquired?
What happens to the existing contracts?
What’s the operating agreement of the new entity if the existing owner still has some ownership?
It goes beyond just information. Its judgment applied to information, and it changes the entire decision.
Props to my client, she knew she needed help beyond what ChatGPT could provide. She was humble, asking good questions, and taking notes.
AI can make us all feel smart when we use it. I love that feeling. It validates our curiosity. It fills the gaps. It makes hard things feel more accessible. All of which can be a win.
But at the end of it all, we still have to make decisions. We have to go with our gut... or more accurately, we have to figure out what our gut is actually telling us. We have to use our human context, our memory, our experience, the things we've lived through that no language model has access to.
We have to go beyond what most people do (or what common knowledge says to do) and go with what we believe is right in spite of it all. That's not easy. And if we try to outsource that part, I don't think we end up happy or make decisions that we truly want to make. We kind of lose something in the process. Depending on the scope of the decision, we might lose a lot.
Deciding is hard. Maybe not deciding what to eat, although Mahla can make that seem quite tough too sometimes ;). But those decisions that feel weighty, like there is a lot that could go wrong, and a lot that could go right based on how they are decided, are tough.
Run a business and those tough decisions multiply.
We built our consulting practice around helping businesses figure out who and what they really are… their ethos, their philosophy, the image and identity they're built on. Then we help them connect every part of the business around that to help them grow.
If you're a luxury company, we make sure everything you do exudes that. If you're scrappy and relationship-driven, we lean into it instead of running from it.
We help you make decisions that align with where you actually want to go, not just generate options or tell you what you want to hear. We don’t just hand you a menu of what you could do. While this can be helpful at times, we are here for the decisions. The kind that may feel hard to make or that you didn’t even know needed to be made.
AI can give you information and what feels like the answers. Keep chatting and prompting and learning. Yet, don’t forget the power of a human to help analyze options and make an aligned decision that is truly yours… a decision that honors your values, and you.
I embrace AI, but I also love trying to figure out what we as humans will keep as uniquely human. How long will making key decisions remain best made by humans? Who knows. I’m betting we hang on to it for a while, and we may just keep it 🤞.
Cheers,
Lane
CONSULTANT + PARTNER
P.S. If you're sitting on a decision right now and the research phase isn't making it any easier, let’s talk.
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