Corporate Survival
You’ve been invited to a meeting with no agenda. This is the first thing you should ask for so you know whether you actually need to attend.
What is an agenda?
🚢🧊💔
Titanic
You ask AI to “make this better.” It gives you something completely different from what you wanted. Giving the AI clearer instructions is known as doing this.
What is prompting?
You’ve been talking for three minutes. Everyone is staring at you. Nobody heard a word you said.
What is “You’re on mute”?
Your coworker hasn't responded to your Teams message all morning. Their status is green. You assume they're ignoring you. Plot twist: they haven't even seen it because of this very common setting.
What are muted notifications?
Your Teams status says “Available,” but you desperately need 30 uninterrupted minutes to finish something. This calendar strategy can protect that time.
What is blocking/focus time?
🦖🏝️🚙
Jurassic Park
Your AI confidently tells you something that sounds completely legitimate. There’s just one problem—it made it up. This AI behavior has a name.
What is hallucination?
You hit “Reply All” with a message that was absolutely, positively meant for ONE person.
What is an email disaster?
Your boss sends: “Can we talk?” No context. You spend 30 minutes mentally reviewing every mistake you've made since being hired. The meeting starts…and they tell you this.
What is “Good job”? / positive feedback? 😂
Someone sends you a message saying only, “Hi.” You reply “Hi,” and then wait five minutes for the actual question. This workplace communication habit would have prevented the whole exchange.
What is putting the request in the first message?
👠🎃🕛🏰
Cinderella
Regular AI answers your question. This type of AI can go further by planning steps, using tools, and taking actions toward a goal.
What is an AI agent?
A meeting that could have been an email has now spawned another meeting…to discuss what happened in the first meeting.
What is meeting overload?
Someone accidentally shares their screen during a meeting. Their desktop is visible. There are 47 things open—but somehow, 32 of them are this.
What are browser tabs?
A production issue happens and five people start changing things at once. Before making more changes, the team should establish this so everyone knows who is coordinating the response.
What is an incident lead/owner?
👠👠🌪️🦁🤖
The Wizard of Oz
An AI agent can access inventory data, check a shipment status, and send an update because it can interact with external systems through these.
What are APIs/tools?
You worked on a document for two hours, closed it, and then realized AutoSave was off.
What is an unsaved document?
The entire team has spent an hour trying to figure out why nobody has access to the file. Permissions look right. The link looks right. IT gets involved. Plot twist: the file is actually sitting here.
What is the sender’s local computer/desktop? 😭
You’re asked why a decision was made six months ago. Nobody remembers, the meeting notes are gone, and the person who made the decision left the company. This simple practice could have saved everyone.
What is documenting decisions?
💊🔴🔵🕶️💻
The Matrix
Your shiny new supply-chain agent receives the instruction: “Keep inventory costs as low as possible.” It responds by practically eliminating safety stock. 😬 The agent technically followed the goal, but the goal failed to capture what you actually wanted. This AI problem is called this.
What is misalignment / goal misalignment?
You’ve spent 20 minutes complaining to your coworker about someone. You suddenly notice that person’s profile picture at the top of the Teams call.
What is forgetting who’s on the call? 😭
A coworker hasn't spoken during the entire meeting. Camera off. No chat messages. You assume they're multitasking. The meeting ends and you discover they were never actually doing this.
What is being in the meeting? 😂