Pointless Ceremony

Occasionally, a story goes viral about a worker who got fired from their job because it was discovered that for over a year, she didn't actually attend any meetings. Instead, she just had a four-second loop of her, nodding along.

The story itself is fake, but the reactions in the comments are not: It's either taken as a cautionary tale for why remote work is bad (employees faking it) or celebrated as a clever way to highlight how pointless much of work has become.

The inspiration worth taking from this story, and the reactions to it: Conduct a "phoning it in" audit of your systems, processes, and ceremonies. Are you holding status meetings where one person talks at a bunch of other people, with no interaction? In that case, they could just as well be fake-attending, which means the meeting doesn't serve its purpose.

It goes beyond people. When you're incorporating AI into any process, what if the AI just "phones it in", i.e., stops actually working, or discovers a shortcut that technically achieves what you asked for, but not what you really meant? Would important things fall through the cracks, or would you be alerted? Is the whole process even required, and if so, is the current AI model the best one for the job?

Don't be like the company in that viral story. Audit your systems, meetings, people, and AI to ensure each provides the best value it can.