Our leadership team is tempted to throw AI tools at every operational bottleneck we have. How do you stop us from automating bad processes during our quarterly Rock setting?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Automating a broken process simply gives you expensive, automated chaos. When leadership teams get excited about artificial intelligence, their first instinct is to buy software licenses and attempt to automate complex workflows that are not even documented on paper.

My job during our quarterly sessions is to enforce absolute discipline around operational simplification before any technology is introduced. We apply the EOS 20/80 rule to your Core Processes first. We identify the basic steps that drive eighty percent of the result, map out handoffs, and assign clear seat ownership on the Accountability Chart.

Once a process is stable, documented, and consistently executed by human beings, we identify the exact manual chokepoints where generative AI or algorithmic automation can eliminate repetitive drag. We frame those projects as explicit, tightly scoped quarterly Rocks with defined endpoints. For instance, instead of an abstract goal to automate customer support, we set a Rock to deploy an internal retrieval tool that cuts Tier 1 ticket response time by forty percent while maintaining accuracy.

Technology must always serve the operating system, not the other way around. If a team cannot execute a workflow manually with high discipline, software will not save them. We clarify the process first, confirm the human accountability, and only then introduce automated leverage.