The Trust Reckoning: The Shadow Side of Force 1

My dad spent over 30 years at a factory making hickory handles for axes.

I didn't think much about it when I was a kid growing up. It was just what he did. But lately I've been thinking about something he used to say.

"The blade gets all the attention. But the handle is what gives you leverage and keeps you safe."

He was right. An axe like the one in the photo, called a double-bit axe, can fell a tree or take off your foot. The blade doesn't care which. What determines the outcome is the handle...the human interface between you and something dangerous.

The handle is where your hands go. It's what gives you control. A poorly made handle, and the tool owns you. A well-made handle, and you own the tool.

I've been thinking about my dad lately. We lost him 8 years ago to dementia. He wasn't a learned man but he had more common sense and wisdom than multiple PhDs.

If he were here today, he'd be amazed and worried about AI. 

He'd be the first to say, in in his old-school way, that millions of people are picking up a powerful new tool... and most of them are grabbing it by the blade.

This issue is about the handle.

Here's what I have for you in this issue: 

🛠️ The Trust Reckoning: The AI opportunity has a shadow side nobody's talking about 

🤖 The "Trust Audit" Prompt: Identify where AI might be putting your client relationships at risk 

The Transformation Is Real

Bloomberg reported this week that McKinsey is planning to cut thousands of jobs over the next 18-24 months. Revenue growth has flatlined for five years. They've already quietly eliminated 200 tech jobs using AI automation.

When the king of consulting is shrinking, the transformation isn't theoretical anymore.

I've been teaching about the three converging forces all year:

1. The AI Implementation Crisis,

2. The Augmented Income Economy, and 
3. Ageism in the Workplace.

Together they're creating the largest consulting opportunity in modern history... one specifically designed to reward decades of experience over youth and energy.

Everything I've taught about positioning yourself as a "category of one" is being validated in real time. The pyramid is cracking. The big firms are stumbling.

If you're an experienced consultant who's been building expertise for 20+ years, this is your moment.

But Force 1, the AI Implementation Crisis, has a shadow side nobody's talking about.

The Shadow Side

When $644 billion gets spent on AI and 80% of companies see no tangible impact... when 70-85% of AI initiatives fail to meet expectations... when 162,000 people lose jobs to automation...

Contempt builds.

My friend Ryan Levesque wrote something in his newsletter last week that stopped me cold:

"Outside of AI-fanboy communities, the general public already has an undercurrent of contempt toward anything AI-generated... And next year, when we begin to see more AI-related layoffs (already 162K and counting in the US alone), and people's household incomes are impacted... The last thing you may want to do is put your brand in the crosshairs of anti-AI protestors looking for an easy target to pick."

162,000 layoffs. Real people. Real families. That's not an abstraction. That's fuel for a backlash that hasn't fully arrived yet.

And it's not just job losses.

Last week I was scrolling through social media, watching heartwarming videos of pets rescuing little children. Golden retrievers pulling toddlers away from pools. Cats alerting parents to danger. I was three or four videos in, genuinely moved... Even shared a few with my wife...but then I started noticing things that violated the laws of physics.

They were all fakes. Every single one.

I felt something I can only describe as betrayal. Not just annoyance. Betrayal. I'd given my attention and emotion to something manufactured to manipulate me. I felt gullible... Maybe a few other things too.

And here's what scared me: if I can't tell what's real in a 30-second pet video, how is anyone supposed to trust anything online anymore?

That erosion of trust doesn't just affect AI-generated content. It affects everything. The default is becoming suspicion. And consultants are caught in the middle of it.

The Backlash Isn't a Separate Force

The backlash isn't some new development. It's a direct consequence of Force 1.

When AI implementation fails at scale...

When people lose jobs to automation that doesn't even work well...

When you can't tell what's real anymore...

Trust collapses.

Deloitte got caught fabricating citations with AI in government reports. ChatGPT users are complaining the new version gives "surprisingly dumb answers." The hype cycle is showing cracks everywhere.

The contempt Ryan describes... I feel it too when I scroll LinkedIn. The eye-rolls at obviously AI-generated posts. The comments calling out "AI slop." The growing suspicion that nothing online is authentic anymore.

This is the shadow side of the same force creating your opportunity.

The Double-Edged Axe

Both edges are real.

The transformation is creating unprecedented opportunity for experienced consultants. AND it's building a backlash that will catch many of them in the crossfire.

Two kinds of consultants will struggle in the coming years:

The Luddites who pretend AI isn't changing everything. They'll fall behind while the world moves on.

The Evangelists who become so AI-identified that they're casualties when the backlash peaks. They'll be easy targets.

The path forward is pretty narrow...much narrower than the hype suggests.

Same blade. Two edges. Everything depends on the handle - the human interface between you and the tool.

Threading the Needle: AI-Capable, Not AI-Branded

Ryan made another point that hit me. He wrote about the "last mile" and how one sloppy moment, like relying on AI to write an email reply, can erase nine great touchpoints.

That's the discipline this moment requires.

Here's how I'm thinking about it:

AI as Research Assistant, Not Author. I've said this all year, but now there's urgency behind it. Your thinking. Your voice. Your judgment. AI handles the grunt work. You do the wisdom work. When clients hire you, they're hiring YOU... not a sophisticated autocomplete.

Protect the Last Mile. The moments that matter most stay human. The close. The delivery. The difficult conversation. The relationship repair. These are where trust is built or broken. No efficiency gain is worth putting them at risk.

Transparency as Trust Insurance. When the backlash peaks, consultants who were honest about their AI use will be fine. The ones who pretended everything was handcrafted will be exposed. Get ahead of this now.

Human Judgment as the Premium. A study from METR found something that contradicts every AI productivity claim you've heard. Experienced developers, people with 5+ years on specific projects, were actually 19% slower when using AI tools. They predicted a 20-24% speedup. They got the opposite.

Why? Because knowing when NOT to use AI is a skill. The judgment about when it helps versus when it hurts... that's what clients actually pay for. Not the tools, but the wisdom to wield them.

That's the handle. The human interface. It's what my dad spent 30 years perfecting. And it's what separates consultants who thrive from those who get cut.

The Window Is Now

The three converging forces are real. The opportunity is massive.

But so is the backlash building beneath the surface.

The consultants who get this right won't just capture the opportunity. They'll be the ones clients turn to when they're looking for someone they can actually trust.

Not "all in on AI."

Not "AI-free and proud."

Something harder: AI-capable, human-centered, trust-protected.

The blade gets all the attention. But the handle is what gives you leverage and keeps you safe.

Full disclosure here, I use my lived experience and pattern recognition to write this newsletter. I also use Claude.ai for ideation and research, fact-checking, grammar and sentence structure for making this newsletter better and better. The final product is from me to you, human to human.

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P.S.: When you're ready, here are more ways I can help you...