Who keeps the answer current?

In Now Make It Useful, I described an AI-generated plan that sounded reasonable and named tools we were no longer using. The answer was organized. Human review caught that it was out of date before it became an instruction.

That example keeps coming back to me when I think about connecting an assistant to a team's documents. Finding a source is only the beginning. Somebody still needs to know whether it applies to the question being asked.

My next question for a team building an assistant would be simple: who keeps the answer current after the person who set it up moves on?

Beyond the Chat Box

The stale plan in that earlier account did not announce itself as a problem. It looked like work someone could pick up and follow. That is the part worth remembering. A clean format can make an old assumption easier to act on.

Let's be real. A folder full of documents is not a decision about which document wins. If two versions disagree, the assistant needs an explicit way to handle the conflict. So does the person checking its answer.

I would start with one recurring question and the small set of approved sources needed to answer it. Next to each source, write who maintains it, when it takes effect, and who can settle a disagreement. A review date is useful. An effective date answers a different question. Keep both when the work needs both.

Give the same documents two different jobs

Here is a fictional example. A team has an old travel policy and its replacement. Someone asks what applies to a trip next month. Someone else asks what changed since last year.

For the first question, the answer needs the applicable policy and the relevant dates. For the second, the older document is part of the evidence. Deleting every old document would make the comparison harder. Treating every version as equally current would make the first answer unreliable.

That is a useful small test before expanding a workflow. Ask the two questions against the same permitted documents. Require the answer to point to its sources and say which period it is describing. If the documents do not settle the question, the next step should be a clarification or a referral to the responsible person.

Put maintenance in the definition of done

I would give the source owner a short review task: check one current question, one historical comparison, and one case where the evidence conflicts or is missing. Agree on the expected response before running the test. Record where the assistant got it wrong and what changed afterward.

This is a proposed exercise, not a report of a customer deployment or measured improvement. Its value is that it makes the maintenance work visible. A changed source, a new owner, or an unresolved exception gives the team a concrete reason to revisit the answers.

Use information your team is authorized to share with the approved tool. If a source is denied, preserve that boundary and route the question to someone who can help. Access troubleshooting does not grant permission to widen access.

Before adding another source this week, name the person responsible for the first one. Then ask them which question would reveal that it had gone stale.

Who on your team can say, with evidence, that this answer still applies?

Ciao, Jason.