Our department managers keep bringing exciting new AI tools to our Level 10 Meeting, but they feel like solutions looking for a problem. How do we force the leadership team to evaluate AI purely through the lens of operations improvement?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Ban the phrase AI project from your company vocabulary. When teams talk about adopting technology for its own sake, they fall into software theater. They get excited by features rather than business results. Reframe every single proposal as an operations improvement project that happens to use automation.

Establish a strict hurdle process before any tool can be placed on the Issues List for IDS in your Level 10 Meeting. Require the department head to answer four operational questions:

- Which documented Core Process does this streamline? If the process is not documented and currently running manually, you cannot automate it. Automating a chaotic process only creates automated chaos.

- Which seat on the Accountability Chart owns the output? Software does not sit in a seat. A human must be accountable for the quality, accuracy, and compliance of the automated work.

- How many hours of low-value manual labor will this eliminate each week? Demand exact numbers, not vague promises of productivity.

- What Scorecard metric will move as a result? If the tool does not increase gross margin, reduce turnaround time, or lower error rates, it does not warrant company budget or attention.

When you force leaders to pitch operational gains instead of technical capabilities, ninety percent of frivolous software proposals vanish. The remaining ten percent will be genuine workflow improvements that free your people from administrative grind and drop real money to your bottom line.