Before automating anything with AI, I ask one annoying question: which number needs to change?
Sounds obvious, right? Almost nobody asks it. Here I'll tell you why I insist on it.
Starting with the tool
Most people start with the tool. They buy the AI, set up the pilot and only then go looking for where it fits. Then they pay a lot to automate a process that was crooked from the start.
The other way around
In Lean Six Sigma we learn the opposite. First you map how the process really works and find the bottleneck. Then you define the metric that matters and fix the process. Only then do you automate what's left.
That's how it went at a market-leading manufacturer, which grew leads per month by more than 3,600%, and with the growth teams that hit 103% of target. The jump didn't come from the tool, it came from fixing the process first.
Who nailed it first
Bill Gates, back in 1995, in the book The Road Ahead. Automation applied to an efficient operation magnifies the efficiency. Applied to an inefficient one, it magnifies the inefficiency.
Swap automation for AI and the sentence still holds, thirty years later.
Before the next tool
New technology doesn't fix a bad process, it just speeds up the mistake. So the next time someone offers you an AI tool, ask: what's the number, and where's the bottleneck?
If nobody can answer, it's not time to automate yet.
And you, do you know today which number in your operation needs to change?
