Jeff DeVerter

Answer the questions you'll be judged on before anybody asks them. Quarter by quarter, I'm measured by MBOs. I put mine in the same Gemini notebook as the supporting files, to make sure I was lined up. Your rubric, your RFP, your audit list. Same notebook as your data.

Before you build an agent, write the question it should answer "I don't know" to. My Gemini Enterprise project manager failed three tests on day one. One sentence fixed it: put the source in brackets after every fact, or say you can't. Ask that one first.

Your AI adoption average hides the only two numbers worth watching. Amazon's memo tells leaders to look at the 10th percentile and the 90th. Why the bottom teams aren't using it well. Whether the top teams' delivery went up to match. Replace the average with those two lists.

IBM and Microsoft can now end an agent's access when its task ends. Neither can tell you what the task is. Both ship short-lived, task-scoped access in place of standing access. Deciding the task stays with you. Before the next agent goes live, write one sentence: its task.

What AI finds is a signal, not a fact. You investigate a signal. You don't forward it. AI found Marcus, the front desk agent guests book direct for. Every quote checked out. If I'd forwarded that to the GM, I'd have forwarded a mistake. Investigate first.

When AI hands you a timeline, check whose number it is. AI said complaints go from two or three a month to zero in 30 to 60 days. Two or three was real. I counted. 30 to 60 days was its number. Hand that to the GM, I sign up for a deadline I never set. Check the numbers.

Every quote was real. Every test passed. The conclusion still wasn't proven. AI ran five tests on my finding about Marcus, the front desk agent guests book direct for. All five passed. Not one tested Marcus. A bad Super Bowl does all five. Check the conclusion, not the quotes.

AI found the answer in ten minutes. That was never the job. Maya set aside an hour to find what was wrong with her hotel. AI took about ten. Most people put the other fifty in their back pocket and walk away. This week I spent them. Do the first 15 minutes today.

Walmart just wrote the template for letting agents in: their own profile, a spending limit, an off switch. Agent Profiles launch next month. Purchases need approval by default, or you set a cap like $50 or $200. Agents can't change the payment method. Copy that for yours.

Don't ask AI to predict your next problem. Test for the last one. I went back through all nine months before my hotel's Super Bowl disaster. Every number was flat. Nothing in those numbers saw it coming. Pick one problem your team already lived through.