One strategic signal 🔭
One people prompt 🧠
One subtraction opportunity ➖

Created by Sam Rogers · Powered by Snap Synapse
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🔭 Signal: The Rulebook Doesn't Exist Yet

Last week I taught 27 L&D professionals in a 3-day Applying AI certificate program. The very same week, I entered a hackathon and landed at NEARCON, a conference packed with crypto-native builders racing toward the next thing.

Two groups. Opposite worlds. Same request: "Just tell us the right way to do this."

The L&D professionals wanted rules as protection. Several had already been impacted by downsizing. The unspoken question behind every hand raised was "How do I not get fired for doing this wrong?" They pushed hard for step-by-step instructions, the kind of clear guidance that's kept professionals safe for decades.

The builders wanted rules as a shortcut. Not out of fear but impatience. "Just tell me the framework so I can skip to the part where this makes money."

Both groups were asking for something that doesn't exist yet. Not because no one's written it, but because the territory is still forming. Rules follow practice. They don't precede it. And right now, practice is moving faster than any rulebook can keep up with.

The most capable people I saw last week weren't the ones with the best instructions. They were the ones who started with something small and iterated toward something better, before anyone gave them permission.

🧠 Strategic (People) Prompt: What if the rules come last?

Instead of asking: What are the guidelines for using AI here?
Ask: What's the smallest thing we could try this week that teaches us more than any policy document would?

Follow-up questions worth asking your team:

• What's one task where learning the "right" way is actually preventing us from learning at all?

• Where are we waiting for instructions that nobody is qualified to write yet?

➖ Subtraction Opportunity: Drop the Prerequisites

Stop requiring people to know the rules before they start doing the work. That sequence is backward right now.

In the certificate program, the breakthrough wasn't a lecture or a framework. It was getting people together and removing a variable. When we sorted people into platform-specific groups (Claude, Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini), the "which tool is right?" anxiety evaporated, and suddenly people could focus on what they were building instead of what they were choosing.

The smallest group, a pair on Gemini, shipped five apps in 2 hours (only 3 of which worked, but each were impressive). The largest groups produced the least. More people meant more "are we doing this right?" loops. The pair just built.

If your team is stuck waiting for the playbook, subtract the prerequisites and give them a sandbox instead. Rules will emerge from the work. They always do.

🧭 Analogy of the Week: No Trail Yet

Imagine standing at the edge of a dense forest with a group of hikers. Everyone's looking for the trailhead. They check their phones. They ask each other. They look for a sign, a blaze on a tree, a worn patch of dirt heading in the right direction.

There isn't one. Nobody has walked this way before.

Most of the group waits. Surely someone has mapped this. Surely there's a guide, an app, a ranger who knows the route. The longer they wait, the more convinced they become that starting without a trail is reckless.

Meanwhile, two hikers push into the brush. They don't have a path. They have a direction. They mark trees as they go. Some of their marks lead to dead ends. They double back, adjust, push forward again. Within a day they've cut enough of a line that others can follow.

Here's what matters: the trail didn't exist until someone made it. It couldn't be found because it hadn't been created yet. The people waiting for the trailhead weren't being cautious. They were waiting for something that only exists after someone else goes first.

The rules will come. But they'll be written by the people who walked through the woods, not by the ones who stayed at the edge looking for a sign, as if that somehow makes the woods safer.

♬ Closing Notes

The demand for certainty is understandable. For the more conventional professionals watching their industry reshape in real time, rules feel like solid ground. For more chaotic builders sprinting toward value, rules feel like a fast-forward button. Both instincts make sense.

But right now, the rulebook is the thing keeping people at the tree line instead of in the woods. The ones building real capability, across every domain I saw last week, are the ones who started with a direction instead of a map, iterated fast, and left trail markers behind them for others to follow.

It doesn't matter what the tool was built for. What matters is: what do you think is actually worth doing with it? That question is where alignment starts and where the real work begins.

Until next time,

Sam Rogers
Trailbreaker
Snap Synapse — from AI promise to AI practice

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