Paul Addicott-Evans

You are your brand. Reach out to your network and use your past contacts and reputation to find opportunities. If you’ve had a successful career to date, and have left a trail of good relationships and trust. you should find that people will sooner work with you, than a consultancy they don’t know.

Ruthless Prioritisation: By focusing our energy on what really matters, we can achieve greater levels of success, make the most of limited time and resources and drive closer to our goals. Identify non-negotiables: Which tasks are crucial and cannot be neglected? Evaluate impact: Only focus on tasks that have a high impact to the overall goals. Urgency and importance: Understand the difference between urgent and important tasks. Prioritise tasks that are both urgent AND important, eliminate tasks that are neither. What resources are available? Prioritise tasks that align with your capabilities and the resources at your disposal. Review and adjust: Be ready to adapt to changing circumstances. Ensure that you remain aligned to the goal.

Operating without feedback is like being blindfolded in a maze. You can’t realistically make any progress unless by fluke. Product builders should be hell-bent on getting real user feedback as quickly as possible, and be ready to react to what you learn.

If you trust the client, and set appropriate boundaries, Slack can be great. Establish an understanding that it can enable rapid feedback, but that it’s also acceptable to not receive an instant reply. Also, that Slack is the place for quick comms that are unsuited to a longer call; and that complex topics need to be broken out into other forms of communication.

I think a very general approach is the use it, but don't trust it. AI does not speak with your voice; it does not have your unique viewpoint and experience. It will definitely help you move faster, organise your thoughts more easily, and certainly automate some mundane tasks - but ensure you keep a 'human in the loop'. Check the outputs; make sure they're on point; edit them and ensure the character, experience and knowledge that your customers are paying you for is visible and prominent in the outcomes.

A key word here is ‘outcomes’. Understanding what the outcome the client ultimately wants will help steer the rest of the engagement. That should be the first question you ask.