That Used to Be Enough

It was once true, for me and most others, that moving an idea from a morsel of something that could be interesting to the point of it being developed enough to properly assess was often too much work. Getting it that far frequently cost more effort or time than I was willing to give.

What has struck me recently is just how much less accepting of that mindset I now am.

AI enables me to give ideas that are not properly formed enough structure to judge them. Once there, I can dislike the direction I ended up taking, or determine that my original idea wasn’t any good. Actually finishing something, or even getting things to the point where they reflect what the original idea was, still takes work. But the first mile of seeing what the product of the idea would look like is much easier.

I described this to somebody recently. I said that it used to feel like I had a field and I had seeds, but if I wanted to see anything grow, I’d have to plant the seeds and work the field, and only then would I know whether I even wanted to harvest whatever grew. Now, it’s like I have a forest. I can go in and search for what I want. There’s plenty that I don’t like, but the things I do like require much less from me to see that I like them. I still make the choice about what I should pursue, but a major reason for not pursuing something at all has disappeared.

When I’m doing a project that is my own, this is a very comfortable way to be. It’s substantially more complicated when someone else is relying on me. If the effort required to do something they need falls substantially, does what they can reasonably expect from me change too?

A couple of weeks ago, I was in a meeting with the representative from a customer I was working with. The representative asked me to explain how a particular feature of their contract functioned with reference to the software suite they were buying. The answer depended on the specific products they were buying, the supporting contract documents, and the additional configuration services that were being performed on top.

There exists in the organisation that I work for a generic explanatory document for this exact question, applicable to all customers buying any combination of software products. It maps everything broadly and correctly, and had I handed the document over, the customer could have pieced together the answer to their question. For a long time, that would have been enough.

I did not provide the document.

Instead, on this occasion, I gave the customer a map of their own unique deal. My AI tool did the heavy lifting of creating it, and I verified the contents and passed it on. Generating it was easy. Verifying it was easy. I didn’t need to open the generic document, because I know what that document says. I could have explained it in the meeting, sent the generic document, written up the bespoke document myself, or had it generated. Those were my options, and it’s clear when I list them that the only thing that ever stood between the customer and a bespoke artefact for this type of question was the time it would have taken me to write one.

The work was simple, but with the generic document already in existence, I could never previously have justified the time it would have taken to create a bespoke document.

When creating it takes so little time, the question of justification flips. It’s not whether I can justify making the bespoke document, but whether I can justify not making it. Under those conditions, why wouldn’t I provide it?

The generic document is still correct. The customers still want exactly what they have always wanted: to understand how their own contracts work. What changed was the reason to send the less personalised version.

Much of what we name as being “enough”, in any work for someone else, is an accommodation of how difficult it is (or was) to do better. The accommodation can survive long after the difficulty has changed.

I’ll note that there’s a distinction here between removing an excuse and creating an obligation.

There’s a longstanding principle of moral philosophy that moral requirements are limited by ability. Immanuel Kant said of this: “Duty commands nothing but what we can do,” and that, “If the moral law commands that we ought to be better human beings now, it inescapably follows that we must be capable of being better human beings.” But somewhat contrary to this philosophical principle, research has suggested that people can attribute an obligation even where someone cannot fulfil it, while withholding blame for the failure. An obligation can stand even where people wouldn’t blame the person who failed to meet it.

Applied here, the ease of a piece of work doesn’t create an obligation to do it. What it can do is weaken the justification for treating the previous answer as sufficient.

None of this settles what anyone owes a customer, but it does describe my scenario better. The customer’s wish to understand their own deal was always reasonable, and the generic document was a sensible answer to it. What the customer couldn’t see was that it was a compromise, or what a bespoke version would now cost me. If anyone was going to reconsider what was “enough”, it had to be me, because I was the only person in a position to do it.

The promise of productivity is complicated by this. From the side of the provider, a saving can look like something for the provider alone to allocate. You finish earlier, produce more, and improve the margin. From the side of the recipient, it means receiving something that they wanted all along, and entirely reasonably so.

The bespoke document in my example was easy to make in a way that is relevant. The document addressed one deal and was verifiable against knowledge that I already had. At a larger scale, it might be much more difficult to have documents checked by someone who already has the answer. A generic document provides control over exactly what is said. A personalised one has the potential to alter commitments, introduce doubt, or omit crucial details. Quality control matters.

But quality control should also be examined. A better alternative that we are unable to responsibly deliver should not share a classification with a better alternative that could be delivered but that requires an investment we would prefer not to make. It may be sensible not to make the investment, but it requires us to assess the costs and benefits, and what the resources could otherwise achieve. The limitations of the processes we currently have in place should not alone settle whether those processes should remain.

As a commercial lawyer, I have to recognise the distance between what is desirable as an outcome and what is reasonable as a commitment. A person’s ability to assist does not give all potential beneficiaries an unlimited claim to that assistance. There is a much stronger claim held by someone who already relies on a person for something that an improvement would serve. My customer asking how their contract works is in a different position from a stranger asking me to create a document simply because I am now able.

This still leaves us with choices to make. Customers may be served better by lower prices, or more time available for complex issues, instead of individually crafted responses to every request.

But no matter how much I think about it, I cannot accept the assumption that continuing to deliver the same result means that I continue to do enough.

In my attempts to be creative, the difference is very clear. I can almost never say that developing an idea to the point of being able to properly assess it is too much work. I am comfortable spending my time elsewhere, or abandoning an idea once I conclude that it isn’t good enough. But the challenge of reaching that point is no longer a determining factor for me.

I love having a forest where I once had a field. But with this gift comes my recognition that the consequences extend beyond my own satisfaction and into the question of what is owed.

Even where I am the only one who can see the difference between what was and what could be, I don’t believe that makes me the only one entitled to a say in what now counts as enough.