I nearly fired one of my best people

I nearly fired one of my best people.

I'd built a good team, and one person was dragging everyone else down. Everyone knew the standard, and they weren't meeting it.

It took me months to see that the problem was me. I'd written every procedure alone in my office and handed it down, without asking the people who did the work.

So I handed the drafting back to the team, and that same person turned around almost overnight.

Researchers at a pyjama factory in Virginia tested this back in the 1940s. Workers who were simply told about a change saw their output drop by about a fifth, and it never recovered. Workers who helped design the change ended up around fourteen percent above where they started.

AI makes my mistake much easier to repeat. You ask ChatGPT or Claude for a new process, email it round, and the team quietly ignores it. A procedure nobody helped shape is one nobody feels they own.

So let AI write the first draft, and stop there.

Sit down with the person who does the job and ask what's wrong with it. Let them change it until it matches how the work really gets done. Then explain why it matters and train them on it properly.

AI can give you a draft in two minutes, but the hour you spend changing it with your team is what gets it used.

Before you send the next AI-written procedure round, book an hour with the person who'll follow it.