Episode 12: My Daughter Asked Me a Question I Couldn’t Answer

The other night, my daughter asked me one of those questions that sounds simple until you actually try to answer it.

“Dad…how do you know so much?”

I laughed.

Because if you’ve ever had kids, you know they have an incredible ability to overestimate their parents.

I told her the truth.

“I don’t.”

She looked confused.

“But you always know what to do.”

“Not really,” I said. “I’ve just seen a lot of things before.”

That seemed to satisfy her, and she went back to coloring.

I didn’t stop thinking about it.

The next morning, it hit me why that conversation stayed with me.

Experience isn’t about knowing more.

It’s about recognizing patterns.

When you’ve spent twenty years working with enterprise customers, you stop seeing isolated problems. You start seeing the same problems wearing different clothes.

One company struggles with adoption.

Another struggles with communication.

A third struggles with decision-making.

On the surface, they’re different.

Usually, they’re not.

They’re variations of the same handful of patterns.

I think that’s exactly what’s happening with AI.

Everyone keeps asking how much information AI can process.

I’m becoming much more interested in what patterns it recognizes.

Because information, by itself, doesn’t make anyone better.

If it did, every executive would become a better leader after reading one more business book.

Every golfer would shoot par after watching YouTube.

Every entrepreneur would build a billion-dollar company after listening to a few podcasts.

Life doesn’t work that way.

Judgment comes from seeing enough situations that your brain starts connecting dots other people don’t notice yet.

That’s why I think we’ve been describing enterprise AI all wrong.

We’re fascinated by how much it knows.

I’m fascinated by what it eventually understands.

There’s a difference.

Knowing that a customer opened three support tickets is information.

Recognizing that customers who ask those three questions almost always expand six months later…

…that’s understanding.

One tells you what happened.

The other helps you decide what to do next.

Maybe that’s what every company should be trying to build.

Not an AI that knows everything.

An AI that understands your business a little better after every single interaction.

Because that’s how people become experienced.

And maybe… that’s how organizations will too.