Sector brief — updated 8 Aug 2026
How teams actually decide, when the plan runs out
Notes on planning, careers and decision-making for people running real teams — the part of the job that no roadmap covers.
What's genuinely in production
What's still pilot theatre
Photograph — planning wall or standup
Vendors that keep appearing
Regulation coming
Every deployment in Ways of working
Photograph — a contact-centre desk with a headset resting on a keyboard and a website security dashboard on the monitorNews, with a verdict / Ways of workingMeta's Personal Agent Protocol has no spec yet. Check your firewallMeta and Sierra want one standard for AI agents dealing with businesses. Nothing to build yet. The agent setting in your bot protection matters more.Photograph — a laptop on a clinic reception desk with a website chat window open beside an appointment bookFailure / Ways of workingAesthetify's chatbot invented doctors' titles. A court held it liableA German beauty clinic's website bot called its two doctors board-certified surgeons. They are not. The clinic fixed it in days and still lost in court.Photograph — an office administrator at a desk comparing two printed supplier price listsNews, with a verdict / Ways of workingChinese AI models are cheaper. What that means for a 200-person firmDeepSeek and Qwen undercut US AI models on price, and Airbnb drew a House inquiry for using one. For a mid-sized firm the saving is small; the risk is not.Photograph — an office manager reviewing a printed software contract or a policy documentNews, with a verdict / Ways of workingAnthropic's data-retention reversal: what it means for mid-sized firmsAnthropic walked back its 30-day retention rule for its top models after 12 weeks. For most 200-person firms the terms never applied. The lesson does.
News, with a verdict / Ways of workingWhat if the five-year plan is the thing holding you back?The strongest operators we interview rarely followed a plan. They followed a short list of rules about what they would and would not do — and let the path assemble itself.
News, with a verdict / Ways of workingWhat if the five-year plan is the thing holding you back?The strongest operators we interview rarely followed a plan. They followed a short list of rules about what they would and would not do — and let the path assemble itself.