August 2026
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsThe Most Valuable Thing Research Can Tell You Is "No"
Before you build for a new market, the research that pays for itself is usually the one that returns a defensible no, not a green light.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsKPMG Published a Report on Agentic AI. 40 of Its 45 Citations Were Fabricated.
I reported a bounce rate that was real and wrong, which is the small version of what just happened to four of the world's largest advisory firms.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsWriting for People Is Persuasion Now. Writing for Agents Is Instruction.
Most documentation readers are agents now, which splits the job in two: writing for a person is persuasion, and writing for an agent is instruction.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsAgents Refactored 26% of Commits. Design Smells Fell by Exactly Zero.
AI agents refactored 26% of commits in a 15,451-instance study, and the median change in design smell counts was exactly zero.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsThe Two Companies That Know Models Best Just Went Into Consulting
OpenAI and Anthropic both stood up billion-dollar AI implementation firms this year, which tells you who actually gets paid for AI work.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsEveryone Can Run Agents Now: the Edge Is the Opinion You Hand Them
Everyone can orchestrate agents now, which makes orchestration the floor; what stays scarce is the conviction you hand the agent.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsSyntax Pass Rates Climbed From 50% to 95%. Security Pass Rates Never Moved.
Veracode tested more than 100 models: syntax pass rates now near 100%, security flat at 56% for a year, and the gap is the real finding.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsAn Estimated 146,932 Fake Citations Entered the Scholarly Record in a Single Year
An audit of 111 million references estimates 146,932 fake citations entered the literature in 2025, and peer review is not catching them.
Field Notes
Consulting Operations806 Repositories, One Causal Design: the Speed Was Temporary, the Complexity Wasn't
A Carnegie Mellon study of 806 repositories found the AI speed gain faded within two months while the complexity it left behind kept compounding.
Field Notes
Consulting Operations31% More Pull Requests Are Now Merging With No Review at All
Faros AI found 31.3% more pull requests merging with no review at all, and the incident data says that skipped gate is costing more than anyone tracked.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsThe EU Just Made "A Human Looked At It" a Legal Category
EU AI Act Article 50 took effect on 2 August. Its human-review carve-out quietly turns accountability into a legal category, not just good practice.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsYour Agents Don't Need Better Retrieval. Retrieval Is the Problem.
Six agent memory systems recall stored facts nearly perfectly and apply them to indirect questions barely at all. The bottleneck is retrieval itself.
Field Notes
Consulting Operations£2.76 Million of Engineering. 5% Reached a User.
One financial institution spent £2.76 million on engineering in a year. About 5% of it reached a user, and AI never touched the reason why.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsThe Atlantic Says Reading Is Ending. Your Deliverable Is a Document.
Just 12% of employees read internal communications in full. Nearly every knowledge business still ships its value as a document someone must read.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsThe PRD Didn't Die. It Just Stopped Being for Engineers.
Anthropic and Meta both demoted the PRD this year, and neither one killed it – because specification was never really the document's job.
Field Notes
Consulting Operations$100 Billion of Consulting Value Evaporated. The Market Wasn't Wrong.
Accenture and Cognizant have shed a combined $100 billion in market value. What investors repriced isn't advice – it's advice delivered as headcount.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsAI Helps Weak Teams 4x More Than Strong Ones. That's Not a Win.
AI cut lead time nearly 50% for low-performing teams and 10–15% for elite ones. That gap isn't the good news everyone is reading it as.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsNot One of 300 QA Engineers Fully Trusts AI-Generated Code
Three hundred QA engineers rated their trust in AI-generated code. Not one gave it full marks, and their workload rose while their headcount didn't.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsMost M&A Happens in Private Markets. Most AI Was Trained on Public Data.
AI due-diligence tools mostly learned from public disclosures. Most M&A deals never generate a public disclosure at all.
Field Notes
Consulting Operations82% of Clients Expect AI-Powered Service. Only 1 in 4 Firms That Built One See a Return.
A survey of 200+ accounting firms found 82% feel more AI pressure from clients. Only 1 in 4 who acted on it saw a real return.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsAI Doesn't Fail on Capability. It Fails on Governance.
A 950-leader survey found governance failures beat model capability as the top reason AI projects underperform – by 15 points.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsKnowledge Stopped Being the Moat. Here's What Replaced It.
As AI makes knowledge and effort nearly free, one coach who works inside OpenAI argues the scarce skill left isn't expertise. It's something else.
Field Notes
Consulting Operations57% of Your Team Is Hiding Their AI Use From You
A global study of 48,000+ employees found 57% hide their AI use and pass the work off as their own. Most managers have no idea.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsMeta Replaced the PRD With a Morning Dashboard. Here's What That Costs You.
A Meta exec replaced his own status reports with an AI system. It took six months before he trusted it – and that six months is the actual story.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsA Consulting Firm Is Giving Away Free AI Strategy Reports. Boutique Advisors Should Pay Attention.
West Monroe now gives away the strategy report boutique advisors bill for. Its own AI chief says that proves what's actually still worth paying for.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsTelling People You Use AI Might Lose You Their Trust
A study of 4,000+ people found saying you used AI cost trust more than staying quiet – even when the work itself was identical.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsYour Delivery Dashboard Might Be Measuring Nothing Anymore
AI didn't break your delivery metrics. It made most of them meaningless – and the one you think is still safe might not be either.
Field Notes
Consulting OperationsAI Cuts the Easy 80% of Coding in Half. The Hard 20% Barely Moves.
AI cuts routine coding by up to half but under 10% on hard problems. If your bottleneck is the hard 20%, more AI throughput won't move your ship date.
