https://molsen.ca/tags/professional-practice/Recent content in Professional Practice on Mike OlsenHugo -- gohugo.ioen-caSun, 08 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://molsen.ca/writing/update-february-2026/Sun, 08 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://molsen.ca/writing/update-february-2026/Since I formulated the oracle/assistant distinction in late 2024, reasoning models with chain-of-thought, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic tool use, structured outputs, and determinism mechanisms have advanced significantly. I commissioned systematic research to assess whether those advances had made the framework obsolete. The distinction remains fundamentally valid: none of those advances resolves the core governance challenges. The research also identified a threat I hadn’t anticipated: agents can now make the routing decision that the framework assigns to humans.https://molsen.ca/writing/eka-in-practice/Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://molsen.ca/writing/eka-in-practice/We’ve deployed Executable Knowledge Architecture at a professional services firm with significant liability exposure. The implementation details are competitive advantage and can’t be shared publicly, but the pattern is transferable. Orientation, Controls, and Methodology Records New users experience the oracle pattern’s failure mode firsthand by role playing during the orientation. They are prompted to ask naive questions and receive plausible (and possibly correct!) answers but then discuss how those answers cannot be verified without reproducing the effort to obtain them independently.https://molsen.ca/writing/office-availability-math/Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://molsen.ca/writing/office-availability-math/The Return of the Assistant uses 80% as an estimate of mutual availability for two people on the same 9–5 schedule in one office. That is generous; actual availability for a synchronous handoff is much lower. Annual Overlap: Days Both Present Start with a standard work year: Working days: ~260 per year (52 weeks × 5 days) Holidays: ~10 days (both absent, so no impact on overlap) Sick days: ~5 days each per year Vacation: ~10-15 days each per year If Person A takes 5 sick days and Person B takes 5 sick days, and these don’t overlap, that’s 10 days where one is absent.https://molsen.ca/writing/return-of-the-assistant/Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://molsen.ca/writing/return-of-the-assistant/In the 1950s and 1960s, every executive had a secretary. Typing pools handled document production. Stenographers transcribed dictation. The professional focused on content; the secretary handled execution. Executives delegated formatting, typing, and filing because their time was more valuable elsewhere. Secretaries’ shorthand, typing speed, and knowledge of office systems made execution faster and more reliable than if executives did it themselves. The Liberation of DIY Personal computers gave professionals direct control over office tasks.https://molsen.ca/writing/agentic-ai-universal-interface/Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://molsen.ca/writing/agentic-ai-universal-interface/Software encodes expertise as instructions a machine can execute. When an engineer encodes a structural calculation into a spreadsheet, that spreadsheet embeds what the engineer knows. When a business analyst creates formulas to process financial data, those formulas distill how the business works. When a software engineer encodes a business process into an ERP system, that system inscribes the process designer’s expertise into reusable automation. The calculation runs without the engineer present.https://molsen.ca/writing/ontology-generation/Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://molsen.ca/writing/ontology-generation/An ontology represents an organization’s concepts, their properties, and their relationships in a structured form. Palantir’s Foundry platform uses this approach to model organizational entities and operations, making objects, properties, relationships, and actions explicit and queryable. Structured organizational knowledge lets people act systematically. Without it, expertise often remains with individuals, process documentation diverges from practice, and departures cause knowledge loss. The problem has always been construction. Building an ontology is expensive.https://molsen.ca/writing/automating-expertise-gets-easier/Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://molsen.ca/writing/automating-expertise-gets-easier/Agentic AI as Universal Interface removes the barriers between domain expertise and system access. This has consequences for what we call “software.” Applications and Integration Software Most software serves needs created by those technical barriers. Applications sit between users and data because users couldn’t directly express what they wanted from the data. Integration software connects systems because connecting systems required specialized knowledge. Business software encodes business logic because encoding required coding skill.https://molsen.ca/writing/what-benchmarks-arent-measuring/Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://molsen.ca/writing/what-benchmarks-arent-measuring/We do not know how much valuable professional work AI can competently perform. Existing benchmarks do not provide that measure. Tame Problems OpenAI’s GDPval benchmark represents substantial investment in evaluation. It recruits credentialed lawyers, accountants, engineers, and physicians to compare AI outputs with human work in blind evaluations of realistic tasks. It is carefully designed and transparently documented, improving on simpler metrics while measuring the wrong things for this purpose.https://molsen.ca/writing/capability-governance/Fri, 27 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://molsen.ca/writing/capability-governance/An artifact is an output someone else will act on, such as a report, calculation, recommendation, design, or analysis. Generation is how an artifact was produced: written by a human, drafted by AI, or produced through some combination of review, refinement, and uncritical approval. Defensibility is whether and to what degree the artifact can be defended when challenged. Defensibility is established through one of two routes: exposed methodology that can be inspected, or empirical track record that demonstrates reliability.https://molsen.ca/writing/critical-thinking-rules/Tue, 29 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://molsen.ca/writing/critical-thinking-rules/I’m seeing a lot of references to “critical thinking” in my social media feeds, but often those most excited about critical thought also hold ideas that are strong evidence of its absence. “Think critically! Examine everything! The world is flat!” Those people define “critical thinking” differently than I do. I’ve organized my working rules into three domains: Foundation Rules: The attitudes and intellectual humility required for critical thinking. Analytical Rules: Methods for evaluating information, weighing evidence, and reaching conclusions.https://molsen.ca/writing/consulting-threat-opportunity/Tue, 12 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://molsen.ca/writing/consulting-threat-opportunity/Consulting is expert advice for hire. The entire business model rests on asymmetry: the consultant knows things the client does not. This asymmetry justifies premium fees, long engagements, and the elaborate pyramids of associates, managers, and partners that populate every major firm. AI encodes expertise. As that expertise becomes more extensive and accessible, clients can obtain it on demand at marginal cost, without relationship management or procurement. The knowledge advantage that sustains consulting is already declining.https://molsen.ca/writing/leadership-lessons-science-fiction/Tue, 30 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://molsen.ca/writing/leadership-lessons-science-fiction/I’ve read Stephen Covey, Malcolm Gladwell, David Maister, and much of the standard leadership literature. When a former team member, newly promoted at his new company, asked which books had most influenced how I lead, my answer surprised me: science fiction. These principles guide how I lead: Praise in public, correct in private Accept responsibility for team failure: “the buck stops here” Assign credit for team success to the individuals who made the difference Loyalty from the team is earned by loyalty given to the team Be willing to change my mind: I rarely end up wrong, but I often start out wrong These are some of my foundational principles.https://molsen.ca/writing/remote-work-formula/Thu, 25 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://molsen.ca/writing/remote-work-formula/“Hey guys, just so you know, I’ll be +7 hours from Pacific time for the next six weeks or so. I’ll mostly be working in Pacific time but some days I’ll be cutting out early. I’ll make sure you know when that is.” A team member we’d hired six months earlier posted this in our Teams chat. He informed us of his plans without asking permission. I was pleased that he could make the arrangement himself and knew to keep the team informed.https://molsen.ca/writing/support-team-real-job/Tue, 09 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000https://molsen.ca/writing/support-team-real-job/In 2020, a number of professionals at our firm billed more than 100 hours in a single week. Another large group hit 90 hours at least once. Factor in eating, hygiene, sleep, and overhead time, and 100 billable hours requires about 95% of a week’s 168 hours devoted to work and survival. On top of that, professionals are often expected to mentor others, manage a practice, attend industry events, write papers, and handle many other time-consuming but non-billable activities.