Is that the problem or the solution?
A plan to make me findable by AI treated my many affiliations as a flaw; I stopped it with one question.
The plan to make me easier for AI models to find framed my many concurrent company affiliations as an entity-resolution headache: too many names on one person, so trim the list until a model could pin me down.
I stopped the work with a single question: is that the problem you are fixing, or is it the solution? The breadth is the credential. We should rebuild around the portfolio, sixteen dated seats, not around one title.
A fractional operator gets hired for the pattern across companies. Shrinking the list would have optimized for a frame I do not hold and erased the very thing buyers pay for.
We rebuilt the identity page around the portfolio: dated roles and a single canonical profile link. The rule that came out of it, confirm the frame before you optimize, went into the operating file.
Before you build, put the objective in one sentence and test it against what the person really said. I did not argue the details of the plan. I questioned its premise, and that is where the error was.
Story details
| Type | Strong opinion |
|---|---|
| Year | 2026 |
| Firm telling | on the Common Ground wiki |