Understand the Process Before You Automate It

Before you automate a process with AI or any automation tool, you need to understand how that process actually works. Not how leadership thinks it works, but how it works on the ground, day to day, in the hands of the people doing the work.

This sounds obvious. It isn't practiced nearly enough. A Kaizen Institute poll found that 55% of companies cite outdated systems and processes as their biggest hurdle to implementing AI or automation, yet many continue to focus primarily on the technology rather than on the operations it will automate. The gap between what leadership believes a process looks like and what it actually looks like is where automation, including your AI initiative, typically fails.

A typical scenario

A leadership team decides to automate its invoice approval process. They describe it as a simple three-step workflow. The actual process, when you talk to the people doing it, involves 14 steps, 4 workarounds, 2 legacy systems that don't talk to each other, and 1 person who holds critical tribal knowledge in their head.

When AI or basic automation gets layered on top of that reality without anyone mapping it first, it doesn't streamline the process. It automates the chaos. Few executives report significant bottom-line impact from digital transformation, and the primary reason isn't technology limitations. It's the failure to redesign underlying processes before digitizing them.

What good preparation looks like

• Map how work actually flows. Not the PowerPoint version, the real version. Sit with the people doing the work. Ask where things get stuck, where workarounds exist, and where information gets lost.
• Document before you automate. If a process isn't documented and understood, you're not ready to automate it. AI needs structure and clarity to operate, and it will amplify whatever it finds, good and bad.
• Fix the broken parts first. Neither AI nor automation can fix a broken process. Exceptions still happen, work still gets held up, and teams end up intervening manually as much as ever, except now the mistakes happen faster, creating more work, not less. Stabilize before you scale.
• Close the gap between leadership's view and operational reality. This is often the hardest part, because it requires honest conversations about how work actually gets done and a real investment of time and money.

The technology is ready. The question is whether your operations are.

Originally shared on LinkedIn. Follow The Practical CIO for new posts.