In July 2026 I wrote about the Silver Tsunami. And the drought that comes after it. Fewer experienced people. Higher costs. Longer onboarding.
There's a second drought coming.
This one we're building ourselves.
Answer Grapes aren't made in a classroom. They're made in the grind. The reconciliation that won't tie out. The order that won't ship. The month-end that takes three days because something upstream is wrong and somebody has to find out what.
Do the work enough times and you know where the process can be better.
That's judgment.
Now we're handing the grind to AI. Some of it should go. Not every keystroke is a teaching moment.
But some of that grind was the classroom.
Back then I said let successors shadow real work. Real problems. Real decisions.
What happens when the work still gets done, just not by the person who needs to learn it?
Nobody retires.
Nobody leaves.
No farewell lunch.
No gold watch.
We just never give the judgment a chance to form.
The frog never notices the heat. Only how comfortable the water feels.
Somebody still has to tell the friction worth removing from the experience worth keeping.
Betting it doesn't have to be us is our risk.
The skill you need to decide what's safe to automate is the skill the automation can stop building.
The Silver Tsunami is taking the people who knew.
This one takes the way people came to know.
Hesitate.
Just long enough to take the temperature of the water.
Dominic Luzi · Chief Answer Grape, Management Alchemy
