Don't give AI the wrong jobs

Don't hand AI the wrong half of your business to automate.

One question sorts it. Could a good new hire do this task on their first morning, from a written page, without asking you anything?

If yes, it is a rule. AI can have it.

If they would need six months beside you first, it is a judgement. It stays with a person.

Most owners I work with get this backwards. They give AI the judgement calls because those feel like the clever use, and they keep doing the rules by hand because the rules feel too simple to bother automating.

Take a small accountancy practice. Chasing receipts, the VAT deadline reminder, the new-client paperwork, and booking the year-end meeting are all rules. Any competent new hire handles them on day one with a checklist.

Telling a client their second shop is losing money and it is time to close is a judgement. AI will draft that email, and it will read well, without knowing the client just remortgaged to keep the shop open. That conversation is why the client pays the practice instead of buying software.

Hand the rules to AI and the partner has Friday for the client instead of the receipts.

Watch for fake judgements. "Only I can quote a new client" usually means nobody else has seen the pricing sheet. Write the pricing logic down and a new hire, or AI, quotes it tomorrow. The task was always a rule that nobody had written down.

I run this test on every process before I automate anything for a client. Ten minutes at a whiteboard, sorting rule from judgement, before any build starts.

Pick one process today. Walk through every step and mark it rule or judgement. Start with the one job you explain most often. If you can write it down clearly enough for a new person to follow on day one, AI can follow it too.