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EP276 Your AI Strategy Is a Hammer. Where's the Nail? - with David Cohen
"We need AI" is the most common brief in business right now. David Cohen's read on what it means: usually nothing in particular. David is the founder of Superposition, a consultancy for data and AI consultancies - a meta consultancy, as he calls it. He's spent his career inside both big and boutique consulting shops, which makes him refreshingly blunt about what's actually happening in the services world right now. His diagnosis is that we're still in the solution-in-search-of-a-problem stage. Everybody's curious. Everybody's excited. There's enormous movement, enormous hype, and very few real outcomes. And most organizations hiring AI help have not identified the problem they're hiring it to solve. Susan pushes on the bigger question underneath: if we're in the knowledge era and knowledge just got cheap, what happens to everyone who sells expertise for a living? David's answer is that knowledge didn't lose value - access did. What's scarce now is contextualized knowledge. The kind that accounts for internal politics, history, and the things no system can pick up from the outside. Also in this one: why consulting content is so relentlessly boring, what surprised Susan when she asked clients why they hired her, and the two words that should precede any AI purchase. About David Cohen David Cohen is the founder of Superposition, a consultancy built for data and AI consultancies. He's a lifelong consultant with both big-firm and boutique experience, and over a decade of delivering data and AI transformation work at F500 scale. He now advises boutique founders on the existential problems of running a firm - go-to-market, positioning, pricing models, and hiring. He builds his workshops and content to be collaborative and genuinely fun, on the theory that the consulting world has more than enough beige. He's based in Dallas. What we get into (00:58) Schrödinger's data consultants - where the name Superposition comes from (02:39) Why he serves other consultants, and the personal story behind it (04:31) What clients actually mean when they say "we need AI" (spoiler: FOMO) (06:03) The scale check - the average person does not care about AI tools (07:38) Automation has existed for decades. Generative AI is not the origin story (09:39) The two things every consultant is really selling - expertise and risk mitigation (10:49) Why clients now assume they shouldn't have to pay for intelligence (11:42) The consulting growth model, explained at a fifth-grade level - and why it's breaking (12:26) Is the knowledge era ending? David's answer: knowledge didn't change, access did (13:45) In the age of infinite information, the right information is the value (14:18) Contextualized knowledge - internal politics, feelings, history, and what AI can't pick up (15:22) The hype cycle, honestly assessed. Blockchain, Metaverse, VR, social (16:47) What AI becomes after the hype dies - the Google test (18:14) Asking rather than deploying first (19:58) Why consulting content is bland, boring, and forgettable (23:06) Susan's client research, and the two answers she never expected (24:51) The clarity problem: consultancies that don't know what they're selling (27:06) Ann Handley's joke about world hunger and 500-word LinkedIn posts (27:39) "A hammer in search of nails" - why real outcomes are still rare (28:59) The problem-first test, and when you should not be solving anything (30:04) Where the water's coming in the boat - assessing before building (30:54) Touch grass Quotes "I don't think they typically mean anything in particular. They usually say that out of a place of FOMO." - David Cohen, on "we need AI" "In the age of infinite information, having access to the right information is the actual value." - David Cohen "It's knowledge that makes sense based on factors that an AI system could never understand or pick up. Internal politics, feelings, context of the greater situation." - David Cohen "Any consultant worth their salt is going to be focusing on the business outcome and not the tool." - David Cohen "We are still in the solution in search of a problem stage. The hammer in search of nails stage." - David Cohen "If you have not identified a real problem, there is nothing to solve there and you should not be trying to solve it." - David Cohen "I'm not going to add one more drop to the bucket of infinite bad content." - David Cohen   Resources Superposition: superpositionstrat.com  David on LinkedIn (he posts daily): linkedin.com/in/davcohen06  The Superposition newsletter: superpositionstrat.beehiiv.com  YouTube, including his game show format: youtube.com/@Superpositionstrat    If this episode landed, read this next in Swan Dive Backwards: Chapter 5, The Audit - the practical version of David's problem-first test, including the 60-minute starter. And Chapter 13, ROI Beyond Time Saved, for what to do once you've stopped counting hours. Susan's book, Swan Dive Backwards is available on Amazon Amazon Canada https://lnkd.in/dixxKJgV Amazon USA https://lnkd.in/dFH5khHw Amazon UK https://amzn.eu/d/07y3Gkvl   Enjoyed this? Drop a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. It's a free resource, and reviews are how new listeners find it.  
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