What Should AI Take Off Your Plate?
Everyone and their mom is talking about AI right now.
If you’re not using it every day, you probably feel like you’re behind, which pressures you into thinking you need to start using AI everywhere. Don’t.
The answer is not to go find the right AI tool. Instead, I encourage leaders to start with the work. Don’t blindly dive headfirst into the AI tool someone said you need to start using. Look at the work your team is doing and start there.
Start with the task, not the tool
A lot of leaders start with the question, “How should we use AI?”
I’d rather ask, “What work needs help?”
AI can help with tasks that are repetitive and take time away from the team.
I’m sure there are several things you can think of that don’t need the same level of judgement, care or context that a team member brings. Start there and identify that work.
Because if you start using AI without naming the work you need help with, you might be creating more problems than you’re solving for.
AI doesn’t have the context that you or your team does. It doesn’t know the client relationship or the history or what has been tried or what matters most to you.
So when you ask it for help, it gives you a polished answer.
But polished isn’t the same thing as wisdom.
That’s why leaders need to be careful by thinking through how to partner with AI.
AI can be useful, but it needs clarity and boundaries and a person who knows the business enough to know if the output is helpful, accurate, and aligned.
Otherwise, it’s going to create more noise than relief.
Give AI the work that drains time
Think about the work that takes time but doesn’t require your team's deepest judgment.
Here are some ideas:
The notes that need to be organized after a meeting.
The first draft of an internal process.
The email that needs a starting point before a real person makes it sound like your business.
Look at those places first.
Because if AI can help your team get to a better starting point faster, great. That might give them more room for the work that really does need them.
I saw this happen last week when I was onsite with a client. We were working through a group activity and I encouraged the team members to pull out AI and put their answers in there. Not so AI could do the thinking for them, but so it could help them think a little deeper about what we were trying to name.
And it worked.
The team was able to better articulate what we were needing from them. They had more language. They had a stronger starting point. And because of that, we were able to keep doing deeper work around helping them become the best at the work they do.
On the other hand, things like the client conversation, creative direction, and decisions that need someone who understands the business and the people involved should stay human.
You don’t want the person who is great with clients spending all day trying to clean up notes or format a process document. And you also don’t want the person who has good strategic instincts wasting their best energy on work that AI could have helped organize.
And you definitely don’t want AI to take over work that needs a real person.
You hired the people on your team for their perspective, instinct, relationships, personality, and judgment. AI should help make more room for that, not crowd it out.
Keep a human as the last touch
This is where I think leaders need to slow down a little.
Because yes, AI can make something faster. But faster still needs to be checked.
It can give you a first draft, but someone still needs to ask, “Does this sound like us?”
It can summarize a meeting, but someone still needs to make sure it caught the part that really mattered.
It can help outline a process, but someone who understands your team needs to look at it and say, “Would this actually work here?”
You can’t hand AI the last word.
A human needs to be the last touch.
Your business has a voice. It has a culture. It has history. It has standards. A tool is not going to protect those things for you.
That doesn’t mean you need to be afraid of AI.
It means you need to lead it.
Don’t create more work in the name of saving time
AI is supposed to help save time. But I’ve seen it do the opposite when people aren’t clear about what they’re asking it to do.
Now someone has a draft they don’t trust.
Or a response that sounds fine, but doesn’t really fit.
Or a strategy suggestion that seems smart until you remember AI doesn’t know the full context.
So now your team is spending time cleaning it up, rewriting it, checking it, or trying to explain why it isn’t quite right.
That’s not really saving time.
That’s just moving the work around.
So before you ask your team to use AI more, decide where AI can help and where a person needs to do it. And decide who is responsible for checking the final output before it goes anywhere.
Otherwise, AI becomes one more thing your team has to manage.
And I doubt your team needs more to manage.
They probably need better support for the work that already matters.
Protect the work your people do best
I like the idea of using AI to help people spend more time doing the work they love and are gifted to do.
That feels like the right direction to me.
If someone on your team is excellent with clients, don’t bury them in repeatable admin work all day if there is a better way to support them.
I heard someone say that in America, we’re trained to see work as a collection of tasks instead of something we create. I haven’t stopped thinking about that.
Because if we only see work as tasks, then AI can start to feel like a replacement. But when we see work as something we create, it changes the question.
Now we’re asking, “How can AI support the task work so my people have more room to create something excellent?”
If someone is client-facing, let them create an amazing client experience. If someone is in product development, let them create a stronger product. Be okay with your team member driving the results and AI helping with the tasks.
If someone is gifted at strategy, don’t let their best thinking get eaten up by formatting notes or rebuilding the same outline over and over.
If someone has a strong creative eye, they probably should not spend all their time fixing AI-generated work that still needs a lot of editing before it is ready to use. Use AI where it helps.
Keep people where they’re needed.
Let AI support the gaps in your team’s genius
All of this takes the kind of leadership that pays attention to what is draining your team and what is meaningful to them. It means noticing which parts of the work need a real human being and which parts are just taking up too much time.
This is also one of the places where I think AI can be really helpful when you understand your team through the lens of The Working Genius.
Where are the gaps in your team’s Working Genius process? Where does the work tend to stall? Is it in invention, discernment, galvanizing, enablement, tenacity, or wonder?
Once you know where the gaps are, AI can be a great resource to help support the parts of the work that don’t come as naturally to your team.
That may be a deeper conversation for another day, but it’s worth paying attention to. AI and The Working Genius can work together in some really practical ways when you use both with clarity.
Use AI where the work gets stuck
If you’re trying to figure out where AI belongs in your business, start smaller than you think.
Pick one repeatable task.
Name the person who owns the final review.
Decide what good looks like.
Then pay attention. Did it give time back? Did it make the work better? Did it create more cleanup?
I really believe AI can help your business.
But it should help your people do better work. It should not make the work feel colder, messier, or less connected to the business you’re trying to build.
If you’re trying to figure out AI and how it should work within your business, schedule a Clarity Call, and we can talk through what should stay human and the best way AI can serve your business.