the slop grenade

Beware the slop grenade.

There's a new workplace hazard, and it comes with a beautifully formatted executive summary.

Someone discovers they can use AI to generate a 15-page report in 90 seconds. They're delighted so they might add a few charts, a strategic framework, perhaps a 2x2 matrix for good measure, and send it to six colleagues with the classic, “Thought this might be useful.”

Pin pulled. Grenade launched.

Now six people have to read it, work out what it actually says, check whether any of the facts are true, and decide what, if anything, needs doing. That's assuming they're doing their jobs properly.

If not, the slop grenade continues its merry journey through the organisation, forwarded from inbox to inbox, perhaps even landing in a customer's hands. Pin pulled. Fuse burning. Nobody quite sure who's holding it when it goes off. Some use AI to summarise it. Others use AI to challenge it. One particularly enthusiastic colleague uses AI to turn it into a PowerPoint and a meeting is scheduled.

Ninety seconds to produce. Six hours to decipher.

And somewhere, an organisational productivity dashboard records another successful example of AI adoption.

We've become extraordinarily good at producing content. The problem is that producing something and contributing something aren't quite the same thing.

The person sending the report feels productive. The people receiving it inherit the work.

I rather like the term slop grenade for this. It captures the casual way we can now transfer the burden of thinking to someone else.

AI can be a remarkable thinking partner. It can help us research, challenge assumptions, find patterns and communicate more clearly. But it can also help us produce 15 pages of something we haven't bothered to think through ourselves. So perhaps we need a new workplace courtesy.

Before hitting send, ask:

Have I made this easier for the recipient, or just easier for myself?

And for leaders celebrating the volume of AI-generated output, another question:

Are we measuring productivity, or merely the speed at which we can create work for other people?

We've spent decades complaining about meetings that could have been emails. Now we have reports that could have been thoughts.