Welcome back to The Territory.
Every week we read a stack of AI news so you don’t have to, and pull out what actually changes how you run your business.
Redesign first, then build the AI workflow
Businesses seeing real results from AI are roughly three times more likely to have deliberately rebuilt how a piece of work happens, instead of dropping AI into a process that never changed.1 The order matters: start from the outcome you actually want, and rebuild the work to get there before you hand any of it to AI.
The way you do something today grew around whatever was possible at the time. Someone had to manually check something, or hand a task to a person, or wait for a specific tool to be free, so the process got built around all of that. AI removes a lot of those old constraints, which means half the steps built around them stop earning their place the moment AI enters the picture.
That’s why the useful question is “what was the purpose of this workflow in the first place?” Look at it with fresh eyes and ignore the steps you’re used to, even when replicating them carefully with AI feels safer than questioning whether they should exist at all. Answering it at the design stage is what actually changes the result. Skip it, and you’ve just built a faster version of the same workaround, still shaped by a constraint that no longer applies.
The same reframing applies to everything around how you handle information day to day, not just AI workflows. Look at what’s currently taking your time, decide what can be automated or handed to AI, and spend the time you get back on the work that actually adds value.
What we shipped this window
The agenda-prep skill looks across your next few days and flags the specific problems buried in your calendar: two meetings booked at the same time, a day so packed you won’t get through it, a meeting tomorrow you haven’t actually prepared for, a trip next week you haven’t booked flights for yet. Ask it “what needs prep this week” or “am I overbooked” and it answers from your real calendar.
Most calendar tools tell you what’s on the calendar. This one tells you which of those things is actually going to cost you: the double-booking, the meeting you’re not ready for, the flight you haven’t booked yet. It’s part of the Chief of Staff Pack, included in Pro at $49/month (or $490/year).
Regards,
David