Delivering Marketing Joy with Kirby Hasseman
Episode 608 - An Inbox Between Us
Hosted by Kirby Hasseman
David Dean joins Kirby Hasseman on Delivering Marketing Joy to discuss An Inbox Between Us, undocumented workplace behavior, and why job titles are often labels for collections of behaviors.
Conversation summary
This conversation centers on the difference between documented process and undocumented behavior. Job descriptions, org charts, and process maps can explain responsibility, but they rarely explain how people navigate ambiguity, build trust, solve problems, and keep work moving when the formal process no longer fits the situation.
David and Kirby connect that distinction to An Inbox Between Us. The book argues that AI is entering organizations built from thousands of small human decisions, adaptations, relationships, and judgment calls that were never formally written down.
The episode also frames a job title as a label for a collection of behaviors. Understanding those behaviors matters because AI adoption succeeds only when leaders understand how work actually happens before deciding what technology should automate, accelerate, or change.
Five key insights
- Most organizations have documented processes and undocumented behavior.
- Job descriptions define responsibility, but they do not fully explain how people handle ambiguity, trust, relationships, and exceptions.
- A job title is often a label for the behaviors people perform to keep work moving.
- AI does not enter a perfectly documented workplace. It enters an adaptive human system already shaped by years of informal decisions.
- Before leaders can understand how AI changes work, they have to understand how work actually happens.
Questions answered
What is undocumented behavior at work?
It is the collection of informal decisions, relationships, adaptations, trust-building, problem-solving, and judgment calls people use to make work happen beyond the written process.
Why is a job title only part of the story?
A title names a role, but the real job is a collection of behaviors: how someone handles ambiguity, coordinates with others, earns trust, and responds when the official path does not fit the situation.
Why does this matter for AI adoption?
AI is applied inside existing human systems. If leaders automate the documented version of work without understanding the behavioral version, they may miss the real process they need to support.
What does An Inbox Between Us add to the conversation?
The book gives leaders and employees a way to see the behavioral evidence already present in everyday communication, decisions, handoffs, and adaptations.
What should leaders study before changing work with AI?
They should study how work actually happens: where people adapt, who they trust, which decisions are unwritten, and which behaviors keep the organization functioning.
Conversation guide
Documented process and undocumented behavior
Why formal process tells only part of the story of how organizations operate.
Job titles as behavior labels
Seeing a role as the collection of behaviors people perform in real situations.
How people navigate ambiguity
The trust, relationships, problem-solving, and judgment that rarely appear in job descriptions.
AI enters an adaptive workplace
Why AI adoption depends on understanding the human system already keeping work moving.
People before technology
Keeping the AI conversation grounded in how work actually happens.
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