Turbulent Measures

Exploring AI's latest signals, effective dashboard creation, and the importance of valuable metrics.

One strategic signal 🔭
One (human) prompt 🧠
One subtraction opportunity ➖

Created by Sam Rogers · Powered by Snap Synapse
Freely available on Substack, LinkedIn, and our mailing list.
New issue every Monday

(Apologies to subscribers, it’s not Monday anymore. I did post to Substack then, but…to a different account I didn’t know I had until today?!? Oops! Now I know, won’t happen again!)

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🔭 Signal

Every week is a busy week in AI, but last week was busy differently.

OpenAI rolled out agents that can think and act on our behalf at Dev Day. Surely you’ve seen the headlines?

The State of AI report for 2025 landed. Not as many headlines for this Silicon Valley insiders’ report full of 313 slides of people trying to quantify acceleration, but well worth reading. Or, for this 8th such annual report, it’s probably time to have your favorite LLM summarize it for you.

The internet’s favorite AI Analyst Nate B. Jones dropped an open prompt for creating the world’s first real AI Fluency Assessment, and the internet collectively went “Okay! Finally, something to grade myself on.”

...And over here at Snap Synapse, we added our own 10-click AI Organizational Readiness Audit specifically for orgs jumping on the agentic AI train (or standing on the tracks in front of it, as the case may be).

Different creators, same energy: everyone’s desperate to capture something that’s moving too fast to hold still.

Turbulent times call for turbulent measures

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🧠 Strategic (Human) Prompt

Before building your next dashboard, ask:
What question does this metric actually answer?

If it’s “How ready are we?”
Safe to say you’re already behind.

The better question is:
How well do we work with what’s already here?

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➖ Strategic Subtraction

This week, take a break from measuring what’s clearly visible.
Focus on existing measures that are clearly valuable.

We’re drowning in vanity scores: readiness, maturity, adoption, alignment.
Every chart promises “Certainty!” Every metric whispers “control...”
But the numbers we’re celebrating usually aren’t the ones that matter.

Capability isn’t collaboration.
Fluency isn’t function.
Readiness isn’t relationship.

We keep tallying inputs and outputs while ignoring the human-machine turbulence in between. But that’s the space where all the real work happens.

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✈️ Analogy of the Week: Turbulence Not Thrust

I like to fly planes, and am a bit of an aviation buff.

Early aviators built stronger engines and bigger wings, convinced performance was the path to progress.
More thrust! More lift!

Meanwhile passengers kept getting sick from unseen turbulence.

The breakthrough came when engineers started measuring the air around the plane, not just the plane itself.

AI work is at that stage now.
It’s all thrust and lift everywhere, pretending airflow doesn’t matter.
But to the people getting sick? You bet it does!

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🎵 Closing Notes

Next week, I’ll share something designed to look inside that space between readiness and reality. We’ll finally measure what’s been invisible. Unlike so much of what’s making the rounds these days, it’s not another survey.

Instead, it’s something purpose-built from the ground up to assess AI collaboration behaviors directly, and I’m super excited to share more in our next issue. You do get that in your inbox, right?

Until next time,

Sam Rogers
Assessor of the Assessors
Snap Synapse – from AI promise to AI practice

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