AI promises to make work faster. Great, you would think. But what if the process we are trying to speed up was already inefficient?
As organisations race to introduce AI into daily workflows, they run the risk of simply automating the way things have always been done.
A cumbersome approval process becomes an AI-assisted cumbersome approval process.
An unnecessary report is produced faster.
A poorly designed workflow moves more quickly.
The result? Greater efficiency, perhaps. But not necessarily greater effectiveness.
AI represents an opportunity to overhaul existing processes to improve workplace prductivity. Because the smartest use of AI is not always doing something faster. Sometimes, it is realising you no longer need to do it at all.
Faster isn’t always better
Consider a monthly report that takes an employee several hours to draft. Sure, AI can reduce that task to 30 minutes which sounds like an obvious productivity gain.
But rather than automating current processes, perhaps we should instead be asking:
- Who actually reads the report?
- What decisions does it inform?
- Does it need to contain the same information every month?
- Does it even need to exist in its current form?
The same applies to emails, meetings, approvals, data entry and countless other workplace tasks.
AI makes it easier to produce work but that does not mean all that work is necessary.
Investigate before automate
Before automating workflows, first map how work is currently performed by identifying:
- duplicated effort
- unnecessary handovers
- repetitive manual tasks
- bottlenecks and delays
- information being entered or rewritten multiple times
- tasks performed simply because “that’s how we’ve always done it”
Then ask where AI can genuinely improve the process. Sometimes the answer will be automation. Other times, AI will assist a human to complete part of the task more efficiently. But sometimes the best solution will be eliminating the task altogether.
Work smarter not harder
This is one of the most significant opportunities AI offers organisations.
Not simply doing the same work faster, but questioning why, when and how that work is performed.
That requires more than purchasing an AI licence or teaching employees a few prompts. It requires organisations to understand their workflows and involve the people who actually perform the work.
After all, employees are often best placed to weed out inefficiencies, as they encounter them every day.
Be AI-Wise
Before asking “How can we automate this?” ask: “Should we be doing it this way in the first place?”
At GAPS Professional Writing, our AI Workflow Advantage training helps teams examine their actual roles, tasks and responsibilities to identify where AI can genuinely reduce duplication, streamline processes and improve the way work gets done.