Mindset AI

The Mindset way / Build your difference, not your plumbing

Questions to ask your team

Barrie Hadfield, CEO & Co-founder Last updated October 3, 2026

You don't need to overrule your team to test this argument. You need to ask the right questions. These seven will tell you whether your developers are building your difference or your plumbing.

  1. How much of the next year goes on plumbing?

    Ask for a rough split between work customers will notice and work that only keeps the agents running. If more than half is plumbing, that is the real cost of building it yourselves.

  2. What happens when customers want their own version of an agent?

    Different customers, tiers and markets will each want agents that behave differently, with no data crossing between them. If every variation means another trip through the development queue, the roadmap slips every time you sign someone new.

  3. How well can we handle customers who want to keep their own data, or keep it in a particular country?

    Enterprise customers increasingly ask for both. If the honest answer is "not yet" or "it would need building", those deals wait on engineering.

  4. Can we guarantee compliance, and prove it?

    Ask which standards the agents meet today, such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA and the EU AI Act, and who will keep them compliant as the rules change. Every gap is a project, and every new customer can ask about it.

  5. Who can change an agent, and how quickly?

    If only developers can, and only through a product release, your product team is stuck in the queue too.

  6. How do we know our agents are performing?

    Ask how the team sees what customers ask for and what the agents actually do, how it decides what to change, and how often that cycle runs. If the answer is occasionally, or when someone complains, the agents are not improving.

  7. Which part of this would a customer choose us for?

    That part is your intellectual property, and it is where the team should be working. Everything else is plumbing.

None of these questions assumes the answer. A team with good answers has nothing to worry about. A team without them has just shown you where its time is going.