Surviving the hype cycle
New demos arrive weekly. Your standards can stay weekly too.
The trap
When everything is revolutionary, nothing is. Hype steals the calendar. Measurement steals it back.
What this means at work
Enthusiasm stays honest when you score demos against jobs, failure cost, evidence you can reopen, and a human owner. Admiration is allowed. Unexamined workflow rewrites are not.
Practice (10 minutes)
- Take the last AI demo that impressed your team.
- Score it on four lines: job fit, failure cost, reproducible on your data, owner.
- Decide: adopt, pilot, or admire-and-leave.
- Write the decision where next week’s you can find it.
Reflection
Which “must use this” moment would fail your scorecard in daylight?