What did you write this week that you've written before?

The HRBP Lab · Issue 002 · May 9, 2026

Hello from the Lab.

Welcome to the lab (in a nod to the new Rocky Horror revival starring Luke Evans) and see what’s on the slab!

Quick note before we get into it. I refined the language around the Lab this week. Human-led and built. AI runs the parts that don’t need my judgment a second time. That’s the same approach I take in my day job, and the same one I want HRBPs to take in theirs. We’re called Human Resources for a reason. The job is to keep people at the center of the work.

That’s the through-line for this week’s issue too.

Sunday afternoon, a friend texted: ten minutes to think together?

She runs a growing nonprofit. She’d been writing the same kind of thing over and over — grant copy that wanted her voice, a monthly volunteer journal review for donors and social media content, onboarding for new program managers. Each one slightly different. None of them new.

By the end of the call we’d scoped three Claude skills she could build by Friday. One for grant writing. One for journal content. One for turning a voice memo into onboarding talking points.

She didn’t walk in thinking she had an AI problem. She walked in thinking she was behind on her writing.

Here’s the move.

AI isn’t replacing HR. It’s absorbing the parts of work that don’t need judgment a second or third time. And HRBPs are the people best positioned to help leaders find the repetition in the first place — and to keep reminding those leaders that there are people at the center of every decision the work serves.

Keep the judgment. Shed the repetition. That’s a conversation worth your leader’s time.

How to spot the repetition

Some leaders can’t tell you what they redo every quarter. Not because they’re not paying attention. Because they’re inside it.

Every leader I work with can name their top three priorities in thirty seconds. Almost none can name the three things they re-explain the most, or the three documents they redraft from scratch every month. That work has folded into the texture of the job. It feels like the work. It’s actually the seams where AI fits.

This isn’t a leadership failing. It’s the cost of being the person doing the work. Someone outside the work has to map it.

Why this is HRBP work

HRBPs sit at the intersection of leader workflow, team operating patterns, and process design. Spotting repetition is closer to your job than to almost anyone else’s in the org.

The skill you need to build for an AI rollout isn’t AI literacy. It’s a question framework that surfaces repetition in a thirty-minute conversation. Small. Repeatable. Something you can run in a 1:1 next week.

There’s a second piece of HRBP work hiding inside this one. When you help a leader move repetition off their plate, the leader gets back the parts of the job that needed them in the first place — the decision only they can make, the conversation that needs a human in the room, the call that affects someone’s career or livelihood. The things our function exists to protect.

If the trade is working, AI takes the repetition and the leader gets capacity for the human part. That’s the trade I want HRBPs brokering.

Five questions to spot repetition in thirty minutes

Take these into your next 1:1. Don’t run all five unless the conversation invites it. Pick the two or three that fit:

1. What did you write this week that you’ve written before?
2. What did you re-explain this quarter that you’ve already explained?
3. What part of your standing meetings feels the same every time?
4. What do you start every project by gathering?
5. If a smart new hire shadowed you for a week, what would they say you do “again”?

Each question points at a candidate skill. The leader walks out with one repetition identified. You walk out with the input for a Claude skill the two of you can scope together that afternoon.

In my friend’s case: question one pointed at grant writing. Question four caught everything she pulls together before drafting a journal entry — donor names, recent program updates, a voice memo. Question five surfaced her onboarding talks. Every new program manager hears the same structure in slightly different words.

Three questions. Three skills. One Friday deadline.

My own version of this

I run this on myself once a week. Look at what I wrote, ask: have I written this before? Half the time, yes. Half of that half is something I could turn into a skill if I sat with it for ten minutes.

I’m building a small framework for when to scope a skill versus when to leave a task as a one-off. More on that later.

Before you do anything

Before you scope your next AI rollout, or your next leader 1:1, run one of those five questions and listen for what comes up.

What did your leader say if you asked them what they wrote this week that they’ve written before? Hit reply and tell me. I read everything that comes in.

Next issue picks up the third move in this series — the deliberate human judgment AI can’t take, even when it could. The line we draw on purpose, not by accident.

— Josh

The prompt I’m using this week

Use this in a 1:1 with a leader you support. It pre-loads Claude with the framing so when you bring back the answers, you’re not re-explaining the goal.

I’m trying to spot repetition in [LEADER NAME]’s work — the things they keep doing that don’t need their judgment a second time. Help me run a short discovery on the following five questions. For each one, suggest a follow-up I can ask if their answer is short or vague. After the conversation I’ll come back with their answers and we’ll scope a Claude skill together for the strongest one.What did you write this week that you’ve written before?What did you re-explain this quarter that you’ve already explained?What part of your standing meetings feels the same every time?What do you start every project by gathering?If a smart new hire shadowed you for a week, what would they say you do “again”?

Why it works: Leaders give short answers to soft questions. The prompt makes Claude do the work of pulling them deeper, so you can stay focused on the person in front of you instead of carrying the framework in your head. The “we’ll scope a skill together afterwards” framing turns the 1:1 into the front end of a build, not the front end of a strategy doc.

I’ve been running this every Monday with one leader I support. Two weeks in, three skills scoped.

If you try it, tag it #buildtogether and show me what you built. I’ll feature the best ones in a future issue.

If you want to go to the source:

• The Extra Time Problem — Issue 001, 2026-04-25 (the deliberate-subtraction setup this issue picks up from)