The Automation of Fiction
The cleanest workflow diagrams always come from people who do not do the work. From the corner office, operations look orderly. On the floor, the reality is a tangled web of unwritten rules. When leadership maps processes in isolation, they build a model of a fairytale. Pushing an unready task into an AI system creates a faster version of fog. The agent quietly invent its own policy to fill the gaps. Automating this fiction scales mistake generation at machine speed.
The Readiness Gate
- Data: The agent must pull clean structured input without a human translating context first.
- Documentation: The rules and exceptions must be written down in a place people actually read.
- Process: There must be a predictable path rather than a unique negotiation for every transaction.
If you answer no to any of these requirements, you do not have an AI opportunity yet. You have an operational hygiene deficit. Fixing the hygiene first feels slow to people who want quick headlines, but fixing it after a failed rollout feels much slower. Most pilots fail from bad data hygiene, not bad prompt engineering. You must bring frontline operators in and write down the top five exceptions before you fund a pilot.
Software vendors sell automation. Leaders decide what remains human. Passing the readiness check is just your ticket to the table. The real strategic choice is deciding where human presence is non negotiable. That decision is organizational design. If you automate indiscriminately, you strip away the exact touchpoints where trust is built. AI handles the scale. Humans hold the accountability.