Category: Book list

Zhuzh & Secret Sauce—Thoughts Around AI We’re All Thinking (But Not Saying)

These thought threads are not going to be speculation on a dystopian future (if you haven’t read your sci-fi, time to get an AI summary of the classics) but rather a questioning. Like the quickening (the acceleration of the pace of change), the rate at which I question what happens around me is accelerating.

Does this generally happen as one achieves more life time or is it a function of our times? (—>has also thought every author/artist ever…) As our civilization fractures and re-organizes around the fourth industrial revolution, I find I’m questioning almost everything.

5 Question-Based Thought Threads Around AI

We’re all working towards that magic sauce that is the perfect consistency of workflow zhuzh and time-saving sauce. They claim AI will fix it. But I have to wonder…

1. Why do we need more tech?

Is it a function of getting older that we don’t want to change? Or rather is it that we don’t want the things that were once easy to change? Or is it just that I don’t need more to do?

As our bodies become more difficult to manage and new experiences become fewer and farther between, I have to ask what is progress? And why is progress often measured as tech? WHY does tech have such an impact on our lives and SHOULD it?

I know, I know. I’m joining a curmudgeons-R-us group.

2. How much time do I have to spend with AI? (*Spoiler* time/relationship zhuzhing from complicated to weekly…)

SOME of us use genAI quite a bit. We actually occasionally get told we must take a break (cough ChatGPT cough) because we have asked so many questions (no–not me doing this).

But how much time do we need to regularly spend with AI? (Guess what–you already spend more time than you may want to!)

Almost all tech tools we use today are driven by predictive modeling, LLMS (large language models), or even neural networks (the largest energy price tag). Not only that, tools that we have used previously have, whether we were aware or not, used AI.

I used an app to generate interesting images for projects long, long before I even wondered how that tool generated what I selected (think image filters).

But exactly how much time must I devote to this practice?

Since I love to conduct polls, I’ve got some data (wheh-hoo!) for you from the annual SEO Summit (now SEO/GEO Summit), that I hold for the MarCom department. I found that this was how often my colleagues used genAI:

Chart 1: Pie chart breaking down data for how often respondents used genAI on a daily, weekly, monthly, or other basis.

Looking at this pie chart, you can see that 47% said they actively use it once a week (that number is probably inflated to be honest) and that 15% use it daily. (Note: few of the web developers participated in this survey and none self-identified.)

If you ask how often I spend with genAI, the answer is complicated. Honestly, my usage is increasing just in the last few weeks because SEO tools I use almost daily have just released some integrated AI features. (It must be exclaimed!!!!)

And I need illustrations for things like this blog, so I’m now using genAI on a more frequent basis. My predictive gut says I’ll be using it weekly from now moving forward. That’s kind of a shocker!

Most people I talk to really enjoy the use of AI for their personal lives. They use it for compiling grocery lists and recipes, brainstorming and planning trips, and now–I’m sure–shopping. (GPT is releasing a shopping feature in their genAI tool.)

3. How healthy is it to depend on AI?

Did any of y’all read the recent article in Harvard Business Review on uses of AI? (I flocking love HBR.) They polled how people used genAI a year ago vs. how they are using it now.

I found it very insightful because the top uses changed from ideation to therapy and life organization. I do believe AI can be very useful for people who need to ruminate or just to share their thoughts with someone.

Here’s where we get into the gray space though. How much do you want the AI to remember about you? How much do we want the company that owns an AI to profit off of us?

On a more positive note, I also did conduct a poll in my own department about how colleagues used genAI, and here are the results:

Chart 2: Bar chart showing how people in the marketing and communications department currently use genAI. Most used services are brainstorming and writing and editing. Least used (for this group of respondents) were video editing and imagery creation or editing.^

I have to say that in my own experimentation, here are my favorite uses to date:

  • Summarization of large sets of written material
  • Persona generation and analysis
  • Gap analysis on webpages or other content types
  • SEO/GEO (Search engine optimization or now generative engine optimization)

Turns out genAI does have some uses! Whether or not those uses are healthy, I will leave up to you to judge. I am not a fan of its use for p*rn, but that ship sailed with the interwebz in general.

4. Who watches the watcher/AI?

In all the best dystopian novels (again–YOU SHOULD READ THE IMPORTANT SCI-FI TEXTS), AI is overseen by powerful entities or even oversees itself. These entities are depicted as either domineering or overseeing. Whether they watch overtly or covertly, the point seems to be that the function of intelligence is to watch and potentially dominate.

Why?

Is the function of the watcher culturally appointed? Or is it the way our civilization has been structured? What is the role of intelligence?

5. And finally, why didn’t they ask me?

If you are a consumer, which is everyone, and self-aware, which is a much smaller portion, you may find yourself thinking, why, in the name of all that is holy, did they not ask me? I would LOVE to give some input into HOW AI is used or even WHAT it is used for.

They say AI is about reducing repetitive processes. I could use help with these:

  • Fixing broken links
  • Scheduling meetings
  • Communicating with stakeholders
  • Creating cross-departmental reporting
  • Doing laundry
  • Doing dishes
  • Cleaning the litter boxes

Over the last 2.5 years, I have waited for AI to achieve these results, but guess what, these repetitive processes I would love to do without will probably never be replaced. Why? Because of contextual and very human reasons.

And if you have heard me complain about all this before, that means it’s ‘cause these are constant needs resulting in repetitive processes. I know. Go figure.

But it does bring me back to the question (of questions) at hand: When will technology address the problems that I actually have?

Zhuzh the Sauce

So, as you work on zhuzhing the sauce, I’d suggest you go a bit meta. When you are on brain default setting (your thought trains turning into fluffy cloud bunnies hopping here and there), try pointing them towards intelligence, products, problems, and special sauces.

Give yourself room to question. I guess that means we may be joining the quickening…

BONUS: What are the important sci-fi texts? (Since you asked…)

I just asked CoPilot (Bing genAI tool) to pull me a list of more important sci-fi texts over the last 100 years.

****

  • I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (1950): This collection of short stories introduced the famous Three Laws of Robotics and explored ethical dilemmas and human-robot relationships [1].
  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968): This novel, which inspired the film Blade Runner, delves into themes of machine consciousness and empathy, questioning what it means to be human [1].
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (1968): Featuring the iconic HAL 9000, this story examines AI reliability and the potential dangers of advanced AI [1].
  • Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984): A cyberpunk classic that introduced the concept of cyberspace and AI transcendence, blurring the lines between human and machine minds [1].
  • The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (1995): This novel explores AI as an educational tool, presenting a future where interactive, AI-powered books shape young minds [1].
  • Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (2021): Focusing on an Artificial Friend named Klara, this novel explores themes of existence, spirituality, and the impact of AI on human relationships [2].

These works (and others) have shaped our understanding of AI and its potential impact on society. Do any of these titles stand out to you?

References

[1] 20 Top Sci-Fi Novels About AI: Origins and Controversies
[2] 20 Must-Read Sci-Fi Novels about AI – BOOK RIOT

*****

Okay, I think I forgot that even the thought of AI may not have existed in 1925…

Have you read any of these? And what did you think? I’ve read almost none of them (and yet I still have Thoughts about AI), and there is one, IMO, very important exclusion: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells.

While some have dismissed these amazing novellas and books about Murderbot the AI construct, as mere plot-driven pleasure-inducing fantasies, I find them much more insightful. If you are a semi-self-aware questioner in the quickening that is.

Have you spotted the questions Murderbot explores? Lemme’ know.

^Polling happened in Mar 2025. There were 34 respondents out of a 10-question survey.

^^Teaser image AI generated; fry sauce a Utah thing

The Business Proposition: Keeping the Bird’s Eye View

Healthcare’s Miserable Business Model

Any of you familiar with The Innovator’s Prescription by Clayton Christensen? It’s a book that nails healthcare’s major problems right where it hurts (I leave the anatomical reference to your imagination)—and it starts at the top. Healthcare is an industry forged of multiple business models with more power players attached to it than mafia family heads in New York, Chicago, and Vegas collectively.

Ever sat in a meeting with a client and realized their goals are completely different than yours? Not only that, but it’s like they expect you to read their mind and magically intuit what it is they need and why they hate your solutions! It’s a communications nightmare!

There might have been a situation not too long ago where I sat in a meeting trying to understand why we were coddling a new provider so much. Why were we privileging them over our all the others who must abide by standard best practices that are modeled on protecting the institution’s best interests? Turns out that particular service has had trouble recruiting and keeping this particular type of specialist, forcing us to have to cede, enacting practices that aren’t necessarily optimal for our site users. (I am keeping this deliberately vague to protect the agitator.)

Why does it have to be that way? Lemme’ tell you why: We’re not all playing on the same field.

Nobody’s on the Same Page!

Nobody’s on the same page. Yeah, I just wrote that again ’cause I know you all relate. And I’m not just talking about seeing eye to eye and having things in common and striving for a company culture of unity. I’m talking about top-down bottom’s-up confusion built on multiple premises that we stupidly expect to play nice together.

If there’s anything that I’ve learned over and over and over again in 2017, it’s this: a siloed* department will not stand, or more importantly, will not bring about accolades, accomplishment, or awards-except on an insular individual-centric basis.

So we need to start keeping the bird’s eye view in mind, ’cause if we don’t rise above our siloes, we will continue to kick against the pricks, as it were.^ We need to listen and determine what our colleagues’ endgames are. Only this will help us craft more effective marketing plans and content strategies.

Models of Three, Leave Them Be

That classic mnemonic^^ could really be “models of three, leave them be,” as in don’t try and smush together things that don’t go together. But let me clarify that for you. As defined by Christensen in his prescription, healthcare is made up of three businesses:

1. Solution shops
2. Value-adding business processes
3. Facilitated business networks

We are perhaps most familiar with the solution shop: an entity diagnosing and providing solutions hoping to effect an improved outcome. That pretty much defines the most familiar healthcare business model we know. Providers see patients, compile data, and make a recommendation that we then pay for: fee for service.

The value adding model combines resources and people in a process to output a better product. A restaurant sources food, brings in a chef, and puts out extraordinary (we hope) food selections for us to choose from. In some cases this can be repetitive work, enabling optimization processes that can reduce overhead costs.

Hospitals and clinics bring people and resources together to provide care at lower prices than individual practices can often do. This can evolve into a fixed price system, embedded in equipment and processes.

And business networks. We are familiar with these via social networks, where we get recommendations from friends, keep in touch with peeps, and occasionally buy and sell things. This model offers a network that makes this possible. In healthcare this can be seen in professional business ties to treat chronic illnesses in a more effective manner or pass on knowledge to general practitioners (telehealth models).

The Bird’s Eye View

With three different business models, no wonder no one is on the same page!! No wonder doctors and subject matter experts can’t understand why we make the recommendations we do! They have almost completely different needs! Are they even operating under the same financial model that we are? In many healthcare organizations (or maybe I just mean mine), no!

For example, are healthcare providers individually reimbursed by health insurance separately per patient they bring in making it more effective to emphasize their personal practices? Or is there a blanket payment for sum total patients for the entire service area?

Almost every single group of providers I meet with has different needs. Some need to make money from out of pocket procedures, some need to recruit and retain providers/faculty, some are driven to separate out their own “practice” from the institution due to payment/reimbursement models that will benefit them. And yet others need to reduce hospital readmissions to maintain reimbursements or be penalized.

Lemme’ tell you, it may take awhile to get the lay of the land, but when you catch that bird’s eye view, it really starts to come into focus, albeit a little at a time.

The Proposition

(Remember There Is Always More to the Situation Than Meets the Eye)

So where does that leave us professionals? Hopefully not on the couch at 2 am watching Are You Being Served and trying to think of how to make everybody happy. Because the reality is, nobody’s happy, and nobody’s going to be happy, as long as we continue to operate in siloes. Let me adjust that sentence. The people who are happiest tend to be at the top of the heap in their silo OR the people who actively choose to take the best from their situation and squeeze lemon juice onto their salads.**

What I’m trying to say, in this delightfully amusing (I hope) yet informative post, is that if the confusion starts at the top, we need to realize that and include that in our work satisfaction calculations. What I’m proposing here colleagues, is that we recognize and validate others in their own business models.

We need to figure out what their end goals are before we can effectively diagnose and make recommendations for effective marketing, management, or content strategies. We need to keep the bird’s-eye view in mind.

*Btw, siloed is actually a verb-I just double checked. Silo can be either a noun, a verb, or an adjective referencing isolation, to isolate, or isolated.
^This is a Biblical reference, and a disgusting one. I will leave it up to you to suss out the hairy details however.
^^You know, after that mnemonic about poison ivy “leaves of three, leave them be…”; a mnemonic, might I add, that was no help when I ventured in to some stinging nettle across the pond. Did our wilderness trainers never consider that we might venture farther abroad than our own back woods? Don’t answer that.
**We are sooooooo tired of lemonade. Unless it’s pink. Then I could be persuaded. What about shocking pink? (Elsa Schiaparelli’s signature color and one I came to appreciate when working for a costume designer whose love for it was almost as great as mine has now become. There were sequined dresses.)

Got My Mind Made Up: The Barrier to Your Personal Empowerment

What’s Your Definition of Success?

I was nearly to 17th S, mentally cocooned in what felt like Deep Thought, braking and gassing those vehicular pedals as only a commuter en route to a day’s labor can, when it came to me—you have to change your mindset yo’! And when I say you, I really don’t mean you or me or even my too-early-to-rise feline. What I I’m trying to engender is more collective, more existential.

Definition of mindset

Our professional coach at work (yes, we are so spoiled) had hostaged us with homework the day before: We were tasked with identifying our personal definitions of success. Unlike the last time she brought this up, that day’s declaration sunk down to a more subliminal level. The next morning as I drove down the commuter chute, between that artery of green, I cogitated.

I feel successful when I empower others. I feel successful when I advocate on the behalf of others. But, interestingly, I do not feel the need to empower or advocate for myself.* It’s one thing to read about our cultural mindset toward women and minorities, but a completely different experience to recognize it in yourself.

What is your definition of success? My definitions apparently need an infusion of vision. Not because I wish to excuse myself from the collective, but because I need to recognize my own needs—what do I need to be fulfilled and thus successful? Does my success truly latch only on the support of others? Or is there something more at the center of that onion?

What’s Your Barrier to Empowerment?

So what’s your barrier to empowerment? What makes you shut down in a meeting or denigrate others because you can or throw things? What makes you lose control and holds you hostage?

Part of my path to enlightenment was learning about Schema Therapy. There is a brilliant book called Disarming the Narcissist by Wendy Behary.^ While you may or may not know any textbook narcissists, the book is entirely worth the read simply to better understand yourself!

Stories We Tell Ourselves

To paraphrase, a narcissist has surrendered control to a belief or notion—an attitude—they formed when their needs were not met as a child. They developed a survival tactic based on these beliefs to cope with this devastating series of circumstances and now are unable to leave this story—a schema—they set up to protect themselves.

They started out vulnerable and impressionable, and then became literally prisoners to that which they used to defend this vulnerability.

Definition of schema

But all of us have schemas. (It’s not just about the narcissists!) As human beings** we run rampant with emotions, whether overly expressed or distinctly suppressed. Our emotions and personal narratives color everything in our lives. Some of my colleagues face down a fear of irrelevance, some a difficulty with authority. Still others are chained to a need to be the best at everything.

What Schema Is Coloring Your Narrative?

What is your BE? (Or barrier to empowerment, as Patricia, our fearless coach, likes to ask.) What’s standing in the way of your success? What is the attitude with which you face life everyday?

What’s your mindset yo’?

* You could argue that quality is along the lines of Mother Teresa, but I think it hints at a deeper, possibly more twisted story. Not that I need hints of course, since I’m bloody living it.
^2008, Disarming the Narcissist: Surviving & Thriving with the Self-Absorbed by Wendy Behary
**Yes, I just invoked the clause of humanity stating that we all exist in a shared state with Things In Common.

Be Brief! And Other Paradoxes of Long Form Content

After All, Brevity Is the Very Soul of Wit*

“Be brief!” says Howard Rauch, author of Get Serious About Editorial Management.1 “Following this should be duck soup for most editors,” Rauch writes. “But that’s hardly the case.” What does Rauch mean by this? Should our sentences consist of only three words—noun, verb, direct object? Or should we seek for more, as the long form content movement progresses?

Primarily, Rauch references sentence structure and grade reading level. He writes of something called the Fog Index, a quantitative measuring resource I will have to check out. He brings up, what is for many of us, a fantastic point: how long are our sentences? What grade reading level are they written for? For whom are we writing?^

But how does this figure in to long form content?

Long Form Content

At first glance this long form business appears to be based around search engine marketing, but hark! What is the end goal of search engines? I find the answer to my question “What does a search engine do?” confusing:

What does a search engine do?

Apparently, a search engine is a web index. That’s nice and all, but how does that help me? Web indexes in search engines provide us with results to our queries on the internet. So, let’s ask Google another question: What is the point of search engines?

The result can be found with an even better question: Why do people use search engines? Dummies.com suggests the top uses for a search engine are:

1. Research,
2. Shopping, and
3. Entertainment.

While my experience certainly does not support the ordering of that list, it definitely supports the content. (My experience rarely equates with the 99%, however, I can only guess that it does make up some part of that total percentage as someone, somewhere, does relate with my experience, probably that miniscule .00000001 percentage of people—I call them friends).

If those are truly the top uses of search engines, then it behooves the search engine to try and align the quality of their web indexing to match those user goals. If search engines are focused on users, then it follows that perhaps we should be too.

Why have I followed this train of thought so thoroughly? Because I focus quite a bit of energy on thinking about applying SEO guidelines to my work. And SEO best practices should be very aligned with content best practices. While search engine results can’t tell us why users are doing something, they can certainly tell us what they are doing.

And if what they are doing is spending a lot of time and energy on long-form pages, perhaps we should spend some time focusing on quality long-form pages.

There and Back Again**

Not too long ago, I recall breaking up long form pages of content. These pages were miles long—well the web equivalent of miles—with anchor links and “back to top” under every section. If long form is The Thing, why then did we change our pages a couple years ago, breaking up information into tabbed pages?

I tend to think we followed a design trend. Or perhaps it was the explosion of SEO-gaming tactics, writing multiple short articles about nothing—fluff punctuated by keywords leading to higher search results. There were also things like microblogging and tumblr.

Design-wise, in a desktop focused industry, it was a way of making vast amounts of information more visually palatable. The web however, as all other things do, evolves. What remains constant is the centrality of search engines in our lives.

With this brief reminiscence, we now ask: long form content, what are you now?

Long Form: 2,000+ Words

A return to Search Engine Journal indicates long form is primarily 2000+ words formatted in whitepapers, e-books, and how-to guides. Short form content, like blogs, social posts, and emails (although I’ve seen some reallllllly long emails…) are apparently also useful, often referencing this long form business.

The best length guidelines for content that I’ve found focus more simply around your audience. What are their needs? What research are they conducting? What do they need to know to make a purchase? What tasks will your content help them to?

Longer form content for webpages focus on these user tasks. What does our user need and how can we deliver that information?

In my work at University of Utah Health, we discovered in our content audits that pages packed with information approximately 1,600 words more or less in length performed very well, at least as far as number of visits and time on page. Whether these met marketing and conversion goals, however, is another story!

Duck Soup^^

Our mission then is clear: we must be brief—but not too brief—focusing on our users’ needs. We must write for our readers using well-constructed but not overly wordy sentences. Our brevity must be more than a haiku but less than a dissertation, and I like to think witty.

Shall we organize a duck soup tasting?

  1. 2017, Get Serious About Editorial Management, Howard S. Rauch, pg 120.

*A sentence that was for Shakespeare, indeed very brief.
^Note: I write this primarily for myself to study and consider the vocation of content. If you are reading it, then wow! Please continue!
**A reference to Bilbo Baggins’ recounting of his journey in The Hobbit. If you don’t know who hobbits are, you have missed out.
^^An idiom meaning something easy to do or accomplish, which became widely used after its use as a title for a Marx Brothers film in 1933