The Frame Changed
The way we communicate our work no longer works. Static decks. Long documents. PDFs no one opens. They stopped landing before AI made them cheap. AI just made it super obvious. You know this.
We already know how to communicate differently. Video won social media years ago. YouTube became the de facto destination for tutorials. Zoom and Google Meet replaced audio-only conference calls. We watch, we react, we scroll on.
Work communications are the last place still trying to make largely static formats do the work of interactive ones we know are more effective, have greater impact, and are easier to remember.
What resonates more now is something someone can interact with and react to. A video. Something clickable. A working, interactive prototype. Something they can touch and push back on, respond to because it's more real, build on, or say "no, not that, more like this."
I built Build Like A Pro for researchers to stop recommending and start showing. Turns out this is not just a researcher problem. It's a larger communication problem that extends well beyond product development, desk jobs, and knowledge work.
What I did not anticipate is how many people outside research are dealing with the same thing, and how ready they are to communicate their work differently. The people signing up tell me so.
Two things are actually going on.
1. Static formats are broken. They were losing ground before AI showed up. Decks that get skimmed. PDFs that get closed. Documents that get "let's circle back on this." AI made the volume of these worse, but the format was already broken. What lands is something someone can react to. Something real enough to push back on. Something interactive, faster, or clearer than the medium it replaces.
I addressed this in my own work years ago by recording my research readouts with the Q&A and archiving the recording with the final deliverables. The deck alone was not enough. Someone reviewing the learnings six months later needed to hear where stakeholders pushed back, and how I responded, and why the recommendation held up. The deck was the artifact. The recording was the context that made the reasoning visible.
2. Judgment matters more than it used to. AI has made recommendations cheap. Anyone can generate a plausible strategy in twenty minutes. What did not get cheaper is judgment. Which version of the recommendation is right for this business, this team, right now? That decision is trained. But it does not travel well in a deck.
Those two shifts are related. The communication format is what gives the recommendation traction and resonance. Judgment is what makes it right.
You have to update how you communicate. And you have to be willing to visualize your judgment, not just claim it.
That is the Build course. Stop recommending. Start showing.
Three hours, live, capped at 8. We cover three mediums. You pick what fits your curiosity or your current work. You leave with something you can put in front of someone the same day.
Two seats left for Saturday July 11 · 9am–12pm PT / 12-3pm ET. $197. Between roles and want to join? One seat per session is 50% off. Hit reply for the discount code.
Can't make it this Saturday? There is a second session on Tuesday, July 21 · 3–6pm PT / 6-9pm ET.
Who is this for?
Anyone whose good ideas keep dying in decks.
Anyone whose meetings moved to video but whose communication style did not.
Anyone who prefers to interact with information, not just read it.
Anyone who thinks visually.
P.S. Yes. I'm intentionally making this argument in an article.
Long-form writing is not the format that fails. It's what happens when someone wants to think alongside you for a few minutes. That is different from a deck asking someone else to sign off on a recommendation. Different job, different medium.
It's for slow conversations. Decks are for decisions. Prototypes are for reactions. Each medium has a job. The mistake is using one medium for every job.
I'll probably start doing more video too. Not because writing fails. Because some ideas just travel better in motion.
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