Consider an ordinary request: “Help me understand why customers struggle to get started.” The visible result might be a report. But producing that report involves several different kinds of work.
Before an answer, a question
First, we have to decide what “struggle” means. Is the problem slow setup, abandoned accounts, or a gap between what people expected and what the product does? The way we frame the question changes the evidence we look for.
Then we collect observations, develop possible explanations, and decide what would distinguish one explanation from another. Writing helps us expose gaps in our own understanding.
Knowledge work changes what we can understand, create, decide, or do.
What changes with an agent?
An agent can participate in several of these activities. It can search for evidence, suggest competing explanations, or test whether a calculation holds together. The useful question is what each contribution enables and how we will judge it.
This suggests a starting practice: name the change in understanding or action that the work should support before choosing its final format.
A question to take into your work
Think of your last substantial document. What did creating it help you discover? What did it help someone else do? Where did the most important judgment happen?