What pisses me off most in a business

What pisses me off most in any business is the stuff that slips between the cracks.

I can forgive an honest mistake. What I can't stand is sloppiness, and it nearly always happens when work changes hands. The more jobs you give to AI, the more often work changes hands.

When I had knee surgery, everyone who came near me asked which knee they were operating on. At one stage I said, "Are you not meant to know which knee?" They told me that was the point. Every person who takes over checks it again, so nobody relies on what the last person passed on.

Hospitals take handovers that seriously for a reason. The Joint Commission, which accredits US hospitals, estimates that 80 percent of serious medical errors involve miscommunication when a patient is handed from one caregiver to another.

Your business needs the same habit, and four headings will do it, whether the handover is between two people or between AI and a person:

What's confirmed: the facts the customer actually gave you. What's assumed: anything that was guessed and needs checking. What's missing: the questions nobody has asked yet. What happens next: the next step, with a name beside it.

Ask your AI to finish every job with those four headings. Ask your team to do the same whenever they pass work on. Put it in the AI's standing instructions, so you never have to remember to ask.

They got the right knee, and with four headings on every handover, a lot less slips through the cracks in your business.