Our middle managers are constantly swamped with routine administrative tasks, and they claim they have no time to focus on our quarterly Rocks. How do we identify which of these low-value tasks we should automate first using AI?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To break this bottleneck, you must conduct a simple capacity audit. Have your managers log their daily activities for two weeks, tracking every task they perform and how long it takes.

Review this log during your next leadership team meeting. Look for repetitive, manual tasks that require zero creative thinking, such as compiling weekly status reports, copying data between systems, or formatting emails. These are your low-value tasks.

Rank these tasks by the total hours they consume across your team. Focus on the ones that represent the largest time suck. By automating these specific bottlenecks first, you directly free up employee capacity for high-value strategic work.

Frame this transition not as a technology initiative, but as an operations-improvement project. Your goal is to move your managers out of low-value administrative loops and into activities that actually drive your Scorecard metrics. When you automate these tasks, you give your team the time they need to execute their Rocks and improve your overall operational efficiency.