eat
/iːt/ verb
to take in what the world is actually telling you, especially when it is inconvenient, unfamiliar or badly timed.
A new book by Phil GrayOut now
AI changed the rules. Your move.
What AI changes. How organisations adapt, or don’t.
What comes next for you.
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Most AI books get written for one of two shelves. Up the top, the C-suite books with the obligatory instruction to move faster. Down the bottom, How to Write a Better Prompt and How to Make Money with AI by Doing Bugger All. This one lives in the middle, where the consequences land. It's for the people who carry the responsibility long before anyone hands them the authority, and for the business owners who have all the authority and no buffer. It's about what AI does to the places people work, why a project with an end date fails a technology that never finishes, and what to do about your own work while some of the choices are still yours.
shift
/ʃɪft/ verb
to change position, practice or identity before the old one fails completely.
or die
/ɔː daɪ/ consequence
for an organisation, profession or way of working, to lose relevance, agency or viability while still insisting nothing fundamental has changed.
It is a sequence, and the order matters.
The day inside the book
One ordinary day, counted.
The book follows a single day, from a 6:00 AM alarm in the Introduction to lights out in chapter 18. Every chapter opens on a moment from that day and keeps a running count of the technology you've touched.
6:00 AM7touchpoints so far today
- 6:00 AM7IntroductionWhy This Book, Why Now
- 6:15 AM14Chapter 1AI Is Not the Story. The Organisation Is.
- 6:40 AM23Chapter 2AI Didn't Arrive. It Seeped In.
- 7:20 AM31Chapter 3How AI Stress-Tests the Organisation
- 8:20 AM49Chapter 4When Expertise Becomes Liability
- 8:35 AM61Chapter 5Who Wins, Who Adapts, Who Gets Left Behind
- 10:15 AM78Chapter 6The Curve at Westfield
- 12:45 PM117Chapter 7Built to Finish
- 2:10 PM138Chapter 8The Organisation's Reaction Time
- 5:20 PM177Chapter 9Rewiring How the Organisation Learns
- 6:10 PM203Chapter 10Leading Between the Clocks
- 8:40 PM226Chapter 11What Good Actually Looks Like
- 9:00 PM231Chapter 12Start Small Enough to Learn
- 9:20 PM235Chapter 13Learn to Work With the Machine
- 9:35 PM237Chapter 14Say Thanks If You Feel Like It
- 9:48 PM239Chapter 15Originality, Creativity, Judgement, Taste and AI Slop
- 10:10 PM242Chapter 16Seeing Tomorrow Sooner
- 10:31 PM245Chapter 17Be a Wisdom Worker
- 10:47 PM247Chapter 18Where This Leaves You
Technology touchpoints so far today: 7. Keep an eye on that number. It comes up again.
Inside Eat. Shift. Or Die.
The technology is only part of the story.
What AI Changes
What happens to expertise, work and value when a capable answer becomes much easier to produce?
- 01AI Is Not the Story. The Organisation Is.p. 18
- 02AI Didn't Arrive. It Seeped In.p. 36
- 03How AI Stress-Tests the Organisationp. 55
- 04When Expertise Becomes Liabilityp. 64
- 05Who Wins, Who Adapts, Who Gets Left Behindp. 77
When AI Meets the Machinery
The structures, incentives and habits that decide whether new capability becomes useful work.
- 06The Curve at Westfieldp. 93
- 07Built to Finishp. 103
- 08The Organisation's Reaction Timep. 120
- 09Rewiring How the Organisation Learnsp. 134
- 10Leading Between the Clocksp. 147
- 11What Good Actually Looks Likep. 160
Your Move
How to build your own understanding, practise your judgement and make a useful next move.
- 12Start Small Enough to Learnp. 175
- 13Learn to Work With the Machinep. 189
- 14Say Thanks If You Feel Like Itp. 207
- 15Originality, Creativity, Judgement, Taste and AI Slopp. 216
- 16Seeing Tomorrow Soonerp. 227
- 17Be a Wisdom Workerp. 236
- 18Where This Leaves Youp. 244
Intro plus 18 chapters in three parts. 286 pages in paperback, with sources and an index.
The spine of the book
Three things, context, authority and sense-making, feeding one loop, sense, decide, act, learn. That's the spine, and if you remember nothing else, remember that.
The book trailer / 03:28
What has to reorganise around you?
An answer arrives. It’s good. You’re still deciding how you feel about that. This book is for that feeling.
The film's end card shows an earlier Kindle date. The book is out now in paperback and Kindle.
Who are you when the answers are free?
Beyond the book
The book ends. The experiments don't.
01The experiments
What I tried, what failed and what I learned.
02Try it yourself
Small exercises you can run in your browser.
03The monthly sweep
New stories that put the book’s ideas to work.
04The reading room
Original sources, with a guide to what they can tell you.
05The assumption graveyard
Old management ideas, and what to try instead.
06Meet ELIZA
Talk to a green-screen chatbot. Then see how it works.
Visual storyConfidently wrong.
A man, a racing model and several very clever machines.
Just for funThe newsroom has no humans.
Live & Die AI is an entirely AI-generated news parody, updated regularly with no humans involved.
About the author
Meet Phil Gray.
Phil Gray first met a computer in 1979. Businesses built through the dot-com boom and out the other side, innovation labs around the world, decades close enough to enterprise change to hear the gears grind. He has been the disruptor and the disrupted. He leads the AI, change capability and culture practice at Blue Seed Consulting. He lives in Sydney.
Eat. Shift. Or Die. / Out now
Your organisation might not survive this transition. Your current role might not either. You are not guaranteed a clean landing.
But you can learn to move before the ground comes screaming up to meet you.
From Chapter 18, Where This Leaves You
