30–40% of your best people's time sits in the waste quadrant

Your top people waste 30–40% of their time in the bottom left of the quadrant.That is not an exception, that is the norm.

Experienced, well paid staff handle work that needs no expertise and annoys them on top of it.

Reconciling invoices.Maintaining Excel sheets.Answering standard emails that a system can write in seconds.

I sort work into four quadrants.Bottom left says: waste.

That is where the smartest entry into AI sits.

These are the tasks that have three things in common:

• They come back daily, weekly or monthly
• They have no direct customer contact
• They turn people into interfaces

These tasks can often be automated with AI to a large degree.Without any risk of reputational damage.

What that gives you:

• Immediate savings in time and opportunity cost
• More focus time for your best people on what counts
• A serious AI learning curve in a safe setting

And the best part is that most of these use cases are running within a few weeks.

Start with a small inventory:

• Write down every recurring task that needs no expertise
• Mark the tasks with no customer contact
• Strike out everything under 2 hours per week for now

What is left are your best use cases, the ones that take on the waste quadrant at the bottom left.

And once you add up how many hours your team could save with this work, or win back for work that carries more value, the result will probably surprise you.

The number usually shows a large potential.And it makes clear at the same time what is at stake.

Your best people are too good for this work.They were hired for their expertise, their judgement and their ability to build good relationships.

What would happen in your company if those hours were free?