Feb 23, 2026 | Issue 39
One people prompt 🧠
🔭 Signal: The Rulebook Doesn’t Exist Yet
Last week I taught 27 L&D professionals in a 3-day AI certificate program. The very same week, I entered a hackathon and landed at NEARCON, a conference packed with crypto-native builders racing toward the next thing.
Two groups. Opposite worlds. Same request: “Just tell us the right way to do this.”
The L&D professionals wanted rules as protection. Several had already been impacted by downsizing. The unspoken question behind every hand raised was “How do I not get fired for doing this wrong?” They pushed hard for step-by-step instructions, the kind of clear guidance that’s kept professionals safe for decades.
The builders wanted rules as a shortcut. Not out of fear but impatience. “Just tell me the framework so I can skip to the part where this makes money.”
Both groups were asking for something that doesn’t exist yet. Not because no one’s written it, but because the territory is still forming. Rules follow practice. They don’t precede it. And right now, practice is moving faster than any rulebook can keep up with.
The most capable people I saw last week weren’t the ones with the best instructions. They were the ones who started with something small and iterated toward something better, before anyone gave them permission.
🧠 Strategic (People) Prompt: What if the rules come last?
Instead of asking: What are the guidelines for using AI here? Ask: What’s the smallest thing we could try this week that teaches us more than any policy document would?
Follow-up questions worth asking your team:
- What’s one task where learning the “right” way is actually preventing us from learning at all?
- Where are we waiting for instructions that nobody is qualified to write yet?
➖ Subtraction Opportunity: Drop the Prerequisites
Stop requiring people to know the rules before they start doing the work. That sequence is backward right now.
In the certificate program, the breakthrough wasn’t a lecture or a framework. It was removing a variable. When we sorted people into platform-specific groups (Claude, Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini), the “which tool is right?” anxiety evaporated, and suddenly people could focus on what they were building instead of what they were choosing.
The smallest group, a pair on Gemini, shipped five working apps in 24 hours. The largest groups produced the least. More people meant more “are we doing this right?” loops. The pair just built.
If your team is stuck waiting for the playbook, subtract the prerequisites and give them a sandbox instead. Rules will emerge from the work. They always do.
🏊 Analogy of the Week: The Shallow End
Everyone remembers standing at the edge of the pool as a kid.
Some kids studied the water. Watched others swim. Waited for the instructor to explain exactly how to hold their arms, when to breathe, which leg kicks first. They wanted to get it right before they got wet.
Meanwhile, two kids waded straight into the shallow end. Waist deep. Feet on the bottom. They weren’t doing it “right.” They were doing it at all. Within an hour, they were swimming. Not perfectly, but actually moving through the water.
The cautious ones eventually got in too. And here’s the part nobody talks about: the ones who resisted longest often became the strongest swimmers. Not in spite of their caution, but because once they finally committed, they paid closer attention to every stroke.
The pool doesn’t care if you cannonball or take the stairs. But you can’t learn to swim from the deck.
♬ Closing Notes
The demand for certainty is understandable. For L&D professionals watching their industry reshape in real time, rules feel like solid ground. For builders sprinting toward value, rules feel like a fast-forward button. Both instincts make sense.
But right now, the rulebook is the thing keeping people on the deck instead of in the water. The ones building real capability, across every domain I saw last week, are the ones who started small, iterated fast, and let the rules form behind them.
It doesn’t matter what the tool was built for. What matters is: what do you think is actually worth doing with it? That question is where alignment starts and where the real work begins.
Until next time,
Sam Rogers Shallow End Instructor Snap Synapse — from AI promise to AI practice
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