(2025-09-06) McKenzie company interface as recon

Patrick McKenzie: A Dangerous Professional trick: I see many people, including people in the professional class, interact with automated tooling as if it were The Company and interpreting that tooling’s inability to help as The Company’s refusal to help.
A different mindset:
The tool, be it a FAQ or a knowledge base or a chat bot or even a call center, is an affordance the company/institution offers me to allow me to conduct recon prior to getting the thing done. Sometimes recon is not immediately successful; oh well.
“It should be easier though.”
Yeah if they’re paying you for consulting advice you can justify spending time thinking about counterfactual organizational improvements. If they aren’t, choose to win.

• cf (2022-01-11) Chin The Dangers Of Treating Life As A Game