🚩 Tactical Memo 068: Own the calls AI can't make

Welcome to Tactical Memo: field-tested tactics for the people who run projects and teams. Lead up, deliver, and get promoted, with AI and humans in the loop. One 90-second memo, twice a week. Read by 18,000+ project leaders at Amazon, Deloitte, and Google.

Field note: "Anything AI can do for you, it does for your replacement just as easily."

RE: the belief that being fast with AI is your edge.

(Maven named me a top 100 instructor for 2026, and through tonight only, Agentic AI for Project Management is 25% off and closes at midnight.)

Two years ago, AI fluency was a differentiator. Now everyone on your team has it. The person who prompts well is no longer rare, which means it's no longer your moat. If your value is "I produce good output quickly," you've quietly become the most replaceable person in the room, because that exact sentence now describes a subscription.

Here's the move. Stop showcasing the output. Start narrating the judgment.

The deliverable is the part a model touched. The decision behind it is the part it couldn't. Which tradeoff you accepted, which risk you ate, which relationship you protected, why you went against the obvious read. That's the uncomputable work, and almost nobody puts it on the table. They hand over the deck and let the thinking stay invisible.

Weak version, in a review: "Finished the vendor analysis. Deck's attached, recommending Vendor B."

Level-up version: "Three vendors scored within a point. I picked the one with the worst demo. They're the only one still standing in three years, and a mid-cycle migration would cost us a full quarter. The scorecard said B. I overrode it, and here's why."

One of those is a status update. The other is the reason your name comes up when there's a bigger seat to fill. Make the call where people can see you make it.

The irony of using AI to help you decide which decisions to keep from AI is not lost on me.

If this helped you, send it to someone who could use it this week.

Until next time,

Justin Bateh, PhD

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