The shoemaker's children go barefoot -- and AI found its 2026 equivalent. Let me tell you about it!
I just came out of a design thinking workshop with marketing teams. Result: a feature-rich solution. Well thought out. Nicely packaged. One problem: nobody had clearly defined the problem to solve.
This is the quintessential 2026 mistake. AI is so fascinating that it short-circuits reasoning. People jump straight to "what can we do with it?" before even answering "what actually causes pain for the teams?"
Doing AI for the sake of AI is seductive. Doing AI to relieve a profession from its real pain points is useful. The nuance is enormous. The results, even more so.
But the most delicious part?
These same teams refused to work in co-creation with generative AI during the workshop. The very same AI they want to sell to their clients. The shoemaker's children have found their 2026 equivalent.
This isn't a judgment. It's a signal. If you haven't yet integrated AI into your own way of working, thinking, and producing -- how do you expect to guide your clients on that path?
The real question isn't "what AI solution do we offer them?" but "what deep problem of our clients are we trying to solve?" Rushing to the tool, its features, before defining the problem is burning resources to produce an illusion. Problem first. Solution never.
If you can't state the problem in one sentence without mentioning a technology, you haven't found the problem yet.
The tool doesn't define the need. The need defines the tool. And to guide others, you first need to have started walking the path yourself.