Guides to the way I work with AI and search
Four guides that each set out a way of working from the first step to what I count at the end. They are the methods behind the research and the points of view on this site and they are written so that a team can follow them without me and without any special tools. Each guide is revised as the method improves and carries the date of its last revision.
Discovery in search and AI answers
How a brand is found and described in search and AI answers and the three questions that tell you which team the problem belongs to. You get the symptoms to look for and the three steps I follow and one journey worked through on a real category. The counting is done outside the AI so that the method reads any model the same way.
Read the guide →Where AI should do the work
How to decide which work in a team AI should take on and how to put it in place one team at a time. You get the week-long time audit and the five steps from listening to the count at day 30 and one audit drawn three ways. The only measure it trusts is what the team still uses a month later.
Read the guide →How I build agents
How an AI agent that does one job for a team is agreed and written and run beside the person who does the job today. You get the four steps and the three screens a finished agent shows and three agents I have built with what each one taught me. The instructions are the agent so the team can read them and change them.
Read the guide →Define a measure once
Why the layer of meaning over a company's data is now a feature of the platforms it already owns and why the real work is writing the definitions down. You get the five steps that settle a definition once and one measure as four tools reported it. Nothing in it needs a new subscription.
Read the guide →The rules every guide follows
Be on the front foot with AI. A business should have a plan for AI and know what to do next rather than wonder. Wondering is the expensive option because the work does not wait.
Close the gap one project at a time. The gap between what AI could do for a business and what the business does with it only closes through real work done one piece at a time and started small. A strategy document on its own has never closed it.
The way we work has changed. Resource is expensive and AI can now do most of the work with one person leading it. That is how I do my own research and it is what most businesses have not caught up with yet.
Avoid waste. Count what a team still uses a month later and stop what it dropped. Every figure should show how it was counted and say plainly what could not be checked.
Depend on no single supplier. Nothing should rest on one AI model or one platform. The calculations belong outside the AI wherever that is possible and where a model's judgement is used it should be said.
Questions people ask me
Can I use the Barley Labs guides in my own team?
Yes. That is why they are written down. The time audit and the day 30 count and the journey questions need no special tools. If you try one I would like to hear what happened.
Where should a team with no plan for AI start?
With a time audit. It takes a week and costs the team little and shows exactly where the repeated work is. The plan writes itself from there and the guide on where AI should do the work shows one audit drawn three ways.
How is a guide different from a point of view on this site?
A point of view makes one claim on one date and says what would change my mind. A guide is a way of working that a team can follow and it is revised as the method improves and carries the date of its last revision. A claim leads to a guide and a guide draws on the research so the three sections read each other.
My details are on the contact page if you have followed one of these and want to compare notes.