Lessons · Molly Graham
articleprinciple"I Know It When I See It" Doesn't Scale
11 August 2026People
Source excerpt
About LessonsWhat AI taught Hilary Gridley about becoming a better manager. If you can't explain what "good" looks like to a robot, you probably can't explain it to your team either.
This is a limited feed-provided excerpt, not the full original work.
Apollo layer
What a founder can learn
Founder takeaway
Turn your implicit standards into explicit criteria, examples, and feedback loops. If quality depends on a founder or manager recognizing it by instinct, the team cannot reproduce it consistently or independently.
Why it matters
Unspoken expectations create rework, inconsistent decisions, and manager bottlenecks. Making judgment legible improves delegation, coaching, and the responsible use of AI while helping quality scale beyond one person.
Relevant guides
Put it to work
Choose one recurring task this week and write a one-page quality rubric: define the desired outcome, list three observable standards, add one strong and one weak example, then ask a teammate to use it and identify what remains ambiguous.