Start with NOT a Blank Page

Start with not a blank piece of paper.

I’ve got a rule when someone asks me for help: don’t give me a blank piece of paper. The scariest thing on the planet, at least for a writer, is a blank piece of paper. The same holds for most endeavors. When I was a programmer, I learned early that I didn't have to write all the code from scratch. I could start with something I wrote before—or even something someone else wrote—and customize it for my needs.

But here’s the thing—not starting from scratch isn’t enough. You also need to start from the right place. The right source. The most up-to-date version. The one that still makes sense in the current moment.

Too often, we pull something from last year, last quarter, or even last week simply because it’s there—not because it’s relevant. We recycle docs, talking points, or slides without stopping to ask: is this still true? Or better yet: is this still useful?

Whether it’s a cross-functional team launching a product, a founder preparing for investor meetings, or a department updating strategy docs, most work today involves groups trying to align quickly around shared context.

We call that collaboration—but a lot of the time it’s just creative reinvention, or worse, subtle misalignment.

The real problem isn’t communication. It’s memory. Context. And confidence in what we’re building from.

Your collaboration should be knowledge-aware.

Strategic recall beats starting over

This builds on something I wrote back in Cognitive Load Is Real: it's not just about what you know—it’s about how much mental effort it takes to get to it. Recreating work from scratch every time drains your time and energy. It’s not just inefficient—it’s demoralizing.

And as I said in GPT Doesn’t Know What I Know, there’s a difference between retrieving information and knowing what it means in context. That’s where human memory, insight, and narrative clarity come into play.

A knowledge-aware system doesn’t just store information—it remembers what was said, why it was said, and whether it still matters. It connects content to context. It holds on to decisions, not just documents. And it gives you a real starting point—not an outdated file or a blank screen.

Most teams aren’t wired this way. “Collaboration” too often means a mess of scattered drafts, disconnected Slack threads, and someone vaguely remembering that “we did something like this before.”

That’s where strategic recall comes in.

Strategic recall is the difference between recycling and rethinking. It means you’re not just finding an artifact—you’re understanding the thinking behind it, and checking whether it still applies.

Think about the last time you dusted off a deck or repurposed a doc. Did you actually check the assumptions? The audience? The strategy? Or did you just find something close enough and hope no one noticed?

AI can start the draft—but you still have to decide what matters

We’re all using AI tools now. Whether it’s summarizing a doc, rewriting a paragraph, or helping brainstorm a pitch, we’ve all started asking machines to give us a first draft. And they usually deliver something solid.

Useful. Sometimes even good.

But here’s the thing: AI doesn’t know what’s changed. It doesn’t know what matters now. It can’t tell if the strategy shifted, if the market moved, or if the audience cares about something different this time around. So even when the output is impressive, we still have to bring the judgment. The discernment. The context.

Which brings me back to a very specific example…

A lesson from analyst relations

Back when I ran analyst relations, every year I had to pull together responses for Gartner Magic Quadrants, Forrester Waves, and other major reports. I always had last year’s answers—but when I turned to product, marketing, or sales for updates, it was like Groundhog Day. Everyone was too busy, unsure what changed, or couldn’t find anything useful. I was handing them a blank piece of paper whether I wanted to or not.

What Databricks is doing with their new ARIA tool flips that script. Instead of asking teams to start over every year, ARIA gives them a not blank page. It auto-generates a draft from past submissions and current documentation—so the focus shifts to what’s changed, what matters, and what needs to be different this time.

That’s knowledge-aware collaboration in action.

Start your own audit

You don’t need AI to work this way. You just need to stop expecting your team—or yourself—to start from scratch.

Run a quick audit:

• How often do you rebuild something because it’s faster than finding the right version?

• How much of your team’s effort is spent circling the same ideas—not because they lack the will to move forward, but because they’re forced to recreate or reinterpret what’s already been done?

• When you reuse something—do you trust it’s still right? Or are you quietly bracing for it to be wrong?

Then ask yourself: What would it take to make our knowledge more useful the second time around?

The Bottom Line

As I’ve written before, clarity reduces cognitive load. And when your team starts from a shared understanding—not a blank page—you create the space for better thinking, faster alignment, and more consistent execution.

This is also part of how we scale story across teams and stakeholders—something I’ve touched on before and will continue to explore in future issues of The Narrative Intel. It’s not just about having the right story. It’s about being able to recall and reuse it in the right moment.

The future of collaboration isn’t more tools. It’s better memory.

We don’t need more content. We need recall—with relevance. Strategic recall.

So the next time someone asks for your slides, your input, your story—or even your help planning a vacation or writing a birthday card—don’t give them a blank page. Give them context. Give them a jump-start. Give them something they can build on, not rebuild from. That’s how you reduce cognitive load, align faster, and stop wasting your best thinking—at work and in life.

That’s what knowledge-aware collaboration looks like.

Berkson’s Bits

Sales jobs aren't going away. Marketing jobs aren't going away. Product management jobs aren't going away. Service jobs aren't going away. Leadership jobs of all forms aren't going away.

They're just changing. That's part of your job. Adjust to change.

What I'm Watching/Reading...

I ran across this Ira Glass quote many years ago. I have shared with a lot of people, especially those in creative fields. It resonates as strongly today as when I first came across it many years ago. It's called The Gap. It starts like this: "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap..."

You can read the rest here. And for the first time I actually found a video of him talking about it.

I will say I have gotten a LOT of value from ChatGPT giving me not a blank piece of paper. It is also something that I've used to help others understand the value they can get. It's great at giving you a first draft of something. Give it more context and it can create an even better second draft. It helps me with context for this newsletter, among other things. Perhaps a topic for another issue.

If you know someone who starts from scratch too often, please share this issue with them for some inspiration and support.

Looking forward to continuing the conversation...

Alan