Gearheads

To continue my stories from Germany (I'm allowed to make fun of them since I'm German, too): One small difference I noticed between Germany and Canada is how people approach the gear "required" for different activities: The moment a new fitness trend takes off, people are decked on in exactly the appropriate gear. You wouldn't be caught dead Nordic Walking wearing shoes meant for Power Walking, or using ordinary hiking poles instead of the dedicated Nordic Walking poles (side note, was that ever a fitness fad in Canada? It was all the rage in the mid 2000s).

While it's true that professionals use the right tool for the job, an excessive focus on using the exact right tools can also lead to analysis paralysis and a fear of getting started with what you have. Translated for your AI journey, that means endlessly obsessing over which AI tool to sign up for. Doesn't help that, in the time between vendor assessment meeting number one and vendor assessment meeting number two, the landscape has completely shifted again.

"But what if we pick the wrong model?"

Nothing wrong with asking "what if" questions, as long as they're not used as rhetoric questions meant to stop the discussion. What if, indeed? People switch from Claude Code to Codex to Gemma and back all the time. It's not a big deal. You're just as likely to experience portability issues when your provider of choice upgrades from one model to the next and deactivates the old one.

Don't let a misplaced need to pick "the best" model slow you down in exploring and adopting AI for your business.