In our 30-person business, every department head wants their workflows automated first. How does our leadership team choose our first operational AI use case without causing internal turf wars?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Stop asking department heads what they want and start looking at your company Scorecard and gross margin leaks. The first operational AI deployment should never go to the squeakiest wheel. It belongs at the single point in your Core Processes where manual friction actively slows down customer billing or revenue generation.

Have your leadership team run a simple triage exercise during your next quarterly planning session. Evaluate every proposed friction point against three strict criteria:
- Volume and frequency: The process must happen dozens of times per week, not once a month.
- Repeatable rules: The task must rely on documented standard operating procedures rather than subjective creative judgment.
- Direct business impact: Automating the handoff must immediately expand capacity or protect gross profit margins.

In a 30-person company, this almost always lives in back-office handoffs. Look at order intake, vendor invoice reconciliation against job tickets, or client onboarding document verification. Pick the bottleneck that prevents frontline workers from doing higher-value work.

Once the leadership team agrees on the bottleneck that creates the largest measurable drag on the company, document the workflow step by step. Establish the baseline time spent and error rate before writing a single prompt or connecting any software. By tying the decision directly to numbers and the V/TO, you eliminate politics and focus the company on traction.