Integrity is Integral

 

I really resonated with this longform X post on how the advent of AI in coding changes what adds value for software developers, and especially this quote:

The companies winning today aren't the ones with the best products. They're the ones with the most direct relationships with customers. The product is just the artifact through which you serve them. Your audience is your moat. Your email list is your moat. Your community is your moat. Your reputation is your moat.

I've never been in the software business, but I have been in the professional services business, and I think it is very applicable. Whether you're a lawyer, accountant, or (like I was for 20 years) an economic consultant, the technical aspects of what you're doing are getting turbo-charged by AI tools so that you can produce work faster and of higher quality and accuracy, and not just on the margins but by orders of magnitude.

But, that also means your customers and competitors can also attempt the same. Maybe you're better than they are, but maybe you're not, and even if you are, maybe it doesn't matter because the savings in cost or time or convenience more than makes up for the difference in quality or accuracy.

But the professional services business has never just about better, faster, stronger at the technical tasks. Oh sure, you have to be top-notch at AI tools (just like spreadsheets and calculators before them). But that's not really the value-add. 

What is, as the post suggests, is the connection to your customers. And to be more specific, not just any connection, but one in which they trust you to lead them to the right answers in the right way.

"Trust" is far fuzzier than tax law or software code or multivariate regressions. But it is the very foundation upon which a successful practice is built, as well as a successful employee in that practice. 

There is a relatively easy part of this and a very hard part of this, although both of them take effort and intentionality. The relatively easy part is something I used to tell my co-workers, which is that before you dive into any sort of analysis, ask yourself what the problem is that I'm trying to solve, figure out what work can help answer that question, and venture a hypothesis as to what a likely result is. We get so tunnel-visioned in our training and tools that we can do a massive amount of work that is impressive and precise and yet completely wrong. And, if we don't take a little bit of time to do some initial thinking, we will not only waste a bunch of time doing the work but we will also have no idea if the result of that work makes any sense or not. Which is a dangerous place to be, to give your client (or, if you're an employee, your boss) a bunch of work you've produced, which may be impressive looking and thorough in coverage but you don't even know if you went in the right direction let alone landed on the bullseye.

Which brings me to the harder thing, which is where trust really comes from, which is having the sort of reputation that customers instinctively know to come to you because you will provide value to them. Which is related to the first point, since of course if you send your customers garbage answers they're not going to think very highly of you. But of course it's more than that. It's having a personal relationship with them. It's having helped them in the past, both formally and informally. It's living your life in a way that is consistent with the kinds of values your customers benefit from and want to be associated with.

And, ultimately, it's about keeping your word. If you say you're going to help, you help. If you say you're going to ship by end of month, you ship by end of month. If you say the trend is up, they can take to the bank that the trend is up; if you say they should do X, they can take to the bank that having done X they will see the benefit of it.

That's what I call integrity. It takes a lifetime to build up. And it takes 100 percent of your energy to maintain, both because it is an always-on trait and also because the potential to ruin it all in seconds is ever-present.

AI has disrupted and accelerated and reshaped, yes. But it has always been true that there was an aspect of work that could be done by almost everyone, and aspect of work that involved customer relationships and personal integrity and ironclad trust. That remains the most important thing.