Most companies are changing faster than they can write themselves down.
You can usually see it in the strategy.
It lives in a doc somewhere on a shared drive.
And it’s called “Strategy_v8_newCEOversion_almostfinal_vF”.
Version 3 went to the board in the spring
Version 5 is still in the sales team’s pitch deck
Version 6 got uploaded to AI last month, and everyone’s using it
Version 8 is the one that’s actually true, but it lives mostly in the CEO’s head
You also see it when someone new joins the team.
They ask four people what the company is going after this year and get four answers that don’t match. Sales gives the version from the last customer call. Product gives the roadmap. And the CEO gives whatever got decided on Tuesday.
If you asked five people on your team, how many versions would you get?
None of this is anyone’s fault.
The strategy got rewritten in March and again in August, while the documents stayed where they were. The market moved and the AI strategy evolved.
I see it with founders raising their next round and with leadership teams at global companies resetting corporate strategy for next year. A plan that used to hold for a few years now changes every few months.
That’s how things get lost in translation. The same word ends up meaning one thing to sales and another to product.
No single source of truth. The faster the plan changes, the wider the gap gets.
What Happens When You Hand It to AI
AI runs on documentation.
Traditional software is deterministic: same input, same output, every time, which is why you trust a spreadsheet. Generative AI is probabilistic. Ask the same question twice and you’ll get two different answers. That’s where its creativity comes from. It also has no way to know which of your versions is current. Hand it 5 and it’ll blend them, and so will every agent you run.
AI amplifies clarity. It also amplifies confusion. It chews through any language left unattended.
Software teams figured this out a long time ago.
The code is the source of truth. It changes every day, and anyone can open it and know what’s current, which is how a hundred engineers work on one product without a meeting to sync. Your company’s thinking can run the same way: written down, kept current, and read by your people and your agents alike.
Codify your thinking: treat what you mean like code.
What Your Team Keeps Bringing Back to You
Start with one decision others could make without you.
Think of the people who wait on you for your input, buy-in or approval.
For most founders and CEOs it’s a short list: which deals to chase, how much to discount, what ships next, who gets hired first. Pick the one that comes back to you most often. Or, if it’s easier, the one you made last week. Write down how you made it.
Say it’s “which new deals to prioritize”:
Principles. How you see it. “We’d rather win five customers who’ll expand than fifty who won’t.”
Practices. How it gets done. “Every qualified deal has an executive sponsor before the second call.”
Conditions. What changes the answer. “We give a discount for a design partner who’ll give us a case study, and never for a logo alone.”
Definitions. Words that mean something specific here. “Qualified means a budget, a deadline, and a sponsor.”
If your team and your AI can read that and make the call you would have made, you’ve codified one decision.
A Prompt to Codify Your First Decision
Copy the prompt below into Claude or ChatGPT and give it 15 minutes.
It’s a stripped-down version of how we work with executive clients and teams at Storied. It starts from what you’ve actually decided, then interviews you, writes the guide, and tests it. It works best in an AI that can see your email, Slack, or docs, and in the workspace your company trusts with confidential material.
Help me write down how I make one decision, so my team and my AI tools can make it the way I would, without waiting on me.
The decision: [one decision people wait on you for, e.g. approving discounts]
Not sure which one? If you can see my email or Slack, look at what people ask me to approve most often and suggest three.
Start with evidence, not my opinion. If you can see my email, Slack, docs, or notes, find the last 5 to 8 times I made this call and tell me what I actually did: the patterns, the exceptions, what I needed to see before saying yes, and any words I use in a specific way. If you can’t see any of that, ask me to paste 4 or 5 real examples, names changed, and work from those. Point out anywhere I contradicted myself.
Then interview me, one question at a time. Wait for my answer. Push back when I’m vague or when my answer doesn’t match the evidence. Stop after 8 to 12 questions, or sooner if you have enough.
Write a decision guide under 300 words, labeled v0.1 with today’s date, in four parts:
Principles: how I see this decision
Practices: how it gets done here
Conditions: what changes the answer, and what still has to come to me
Definitions: the words that mean something specific here
Test it. Give me three realistic scenarios, one an edge case. Decide each using only the guide and show your reasoning. When I correct you, update the guide, bump the version, and note what changed in one line.
Finish by formatting the guide so I can paste it into a Claude Project, a custom GPT, or our team wiki.
Run it on the decisions that most often bottleneck your team. Once your thinking is codified, people stop queuing up for your answer, your AI agents can act as your surrogate, and the next time the strategy changes you update five pages instead of holding five meetings.
Once your thinking is written down, it stops depending on who was in the meeting.
Get it out of your head. That’s how you stop being the bottleneck.
Michael
P.S. When you’re ready, here’s three ways I can help:
If you want a second set of eyes on your narrative, reply and tell me more
If you need narrative architecture, I help CEOs & operators do just that. Apply for Q3
If you need a keynote speaker, I do them on a select basis. Let’s talk