tldr;
I spent the summer telling you to audit your bus factor. In September, the universe scheduled my exam and didn't let me study.
What held while I was gone had one property in common: the why was written down, close to where the confusion would happen.
What generated texts to a man on painkillers lived exclusively in my head. I could have named every one in advance.
Also in this issue: the conversion machine I built in public this summer is finished, and its deployment map is my Rising schedule.
Bring your audit findings to Vegas. Not going? Subscribing is attending remotely. Same deal as always.
Somebody replaced one of my hips two weeks ago. I'm told it went great. I was asleep for the interesting part.
One detour before I close the medical file: thank you to Debby Schroeder, Lawrence Berra, and the whole crew from my former team at Magellan Health for checking in on me, and for sending the two finest gifts in orthopedic history. A mug that reads "I just had a joint (replacement)," and a Christmas ornament for "Christmas with my new hip 2026." It's hard to feel sorry for yourself when your coffee mug is doing a bit.
That's the last you'll hear about the hip...
The part worth your time is what happened to everything I'm responsible for during the ten days I was, for the first time in thirty-plus years of working, genuinely unreachable.
Not "checking email from the lake or the shore" unreachable. Unreachable.
All summer I've been telling you to run the audit. Who else knows. Where the why lives. What breaks when the one person is gone. Then the universe looked at my calendar, picked a Wednesday in September, and scheduled the exam.
What the test actually measures
Here's the finding, and it held with more consistency than I expected.
The things that kept running weren't the well-documented things. Nobody opened a runbook. Nobody has ever opened a runbook. What existed was context sitting close to where the confusion was going to strike: a note in the field, a dated line explaining why a rule exists, a two-sentence handoff written like the reader was smart.
And the things that generated texts to a man on a couch full of painkillers? Every single one was a spot where the answer lived only in my head. I knew which ones they'd be. I'd been meaning to write them down since roughly June.
I know my failure mode because I am the failure mode. Years ago, I built a geocoding script at a company I no longer work for. Three plus years after I left, somebody there called me. Not to ask how it worked. To ask whether it was load-bearing. Nobody inside the building could answer that question, so they called a guy who'd been gone since the last administration.
On that one I wasn't the archaeologist. I was the ancient civilization.
The audit isn't a compliance exercise. It's a prediction of which texts you get on your worst week. Yours is coming: a vacation, a resignation, a jury summons, a hip. The only variable is whether you take the test on your own schedule.
One page, ten minutes. Run it while your bus factor is still hypothetical.
The other thing I built this summer
Now the part I've been assembling in public since July, possibly without telling you it was all one machine.
In July, the best-performing post I've ever written reached 71,600 people and converted six subscribers. Six. I'm doing the full math on that next week, because it turned into an argument I'm delivering in a room full of RUG leaders. Short version for today: reach without capture is weather. It passes over you and nothing grows.
So instead of posting harder, I spent the summer building a net.
The one-page audit, now wearing a QR code, so a talk becomes a takeaway becomes a subscription.
The tag. Designed, printed, and invoiced by Justin's 3D Lab (brand premium included, and we've agreed to stop discussing it, I think, but every time I have an update, he wants another change order). You voted on the design. It flies on my backpack in two weeks, with a small production run going to interested RUG leaders.
The landing page every scan hits, with a scoreboard attached, because the proprietor of the Lab is in active competition with that 71,600-impression post. The number to beat is six.
The recap promise. Every room I'm in at Rising ends the same way: I write up what the room said, anonymized, and it goes to subscribers. The conversation becomes the artifact.
None of this is sophisticated. That's the point. A QR code, a landing page, a kid with a printer, and a promise I intend to keep.
Steal all of it. It works at a forty-chair RUG on a Tuesday afternoon.
Where to find me
Sunday: I'm facilitating an hour-long AI governance roundtable at the pre-Rising Share-a-thon. If you read the Twenty People post and have opinions, come sit at the table and bring them.
Monday, 1:00: Ten minutes at the Workday Community Summit on why your room is gold, in a room run by Greg Higgins, in front of the people who run the rooms. It's the argument I've been circling all year.
Monday, evening: Dinner with those same people. If you organize a RUG and you're on that list, find me before the entrées.
Tuesday, 5–8: A forum on the responsible use of AI, hosted by Interlay with Ceci and the Well Built crew, at the Venetian. This is one you can actually get into: tickets are through Well Built, and their premium subscribers get first crack. If Sunday's roundtable is the version where twelve of us discuss at a table, this is the version with a bigger room.
Braindates: I made the case last week that the braindate is the product. So I should probably practice what I preached. I'm not hosting any yet. I will if anyone wants one. DM me and I'll put something on the board, because thirty scheduled minutes with a few practitioners beats a hallway collision every time.
All week: hallways, sessions, the tag on the backpack. Scan it, say hi, argue with me about your audit results. That last one is a genuine request, and it's my favorite genre of conversation (just ask Justin).
If you're not going to Vegas, you're not missing the substance, because the substance ships here. The roundtable writeup, the room argument in full, the scoreboard, and an honest accounting of what mattered versus what was booth glitter.
Subscribing is attending remotely. That's always been the deal.
Two weeks out. The machine is built, the hip is bionic, and for once the hopper is full.
See you in the hallways.
— Mike
Director HR Tech | Back in the Chair
P.S. Before the tag flew anywhere we scan-tested it in bad lighting, because a QR code that only works under a desk lamp is a prop. Justin's prints passed on every phone we tried. Mine failed. He picked my version up, turned it toward the window, flipped it over twice, and said "huh." No diagnosis. No follow-up. Just "huh," and then he went back to his own print run. I've sat through hour-long design reviews that delivered less.
P.P.S. - Hey Christian, sorry about your Commanders week one. It came down to the wire though, and they looked pretty good. Too bad Jayden went down against the Cowboys. Greg (and Kris, Karthik, Sheena, and the rest of my Dallas friends), we're coming for you. 10/26 is circled on my calendar. Go Birds 🦅.