The Work Should Work.

I like work.

Real work. People knowing things. Getting good at things. Taking care with things. Knowing the customer who always needs something weird. Catching the mistake because you've seen it before. Calling somebody because the situation needs a conversation.

I like businesses full of people who know how the business works.

What I don't like is how much work we create around the work.

Copy this over there. Check whether that came in. Send the same information again. Ask where something stands. Make another spreadsheet so we can understand the other spreadsheet. Remember to follow up because nothing else will. Keep a private list because the official system can't quite be trusted. Ask the one person who knows.

None of this means the people are inefficient.

Usually, they're compensating.

They are holding together systems that don't know enough about each other. They remember what the software doesn't. They invent little procedures around procedures. They catch failures before customers see them. They become remarkably good at navigating machinery nobody would have designed this way on purpose.

Eventually the workaround becomes the job.

I think we can do better.

People should have real work to do.

I don't mean only glamorous work.

Invoices need to go out. Records need to be kept. Customers need answers. Forms need filling out. Somebody has to notice when Tuesday's numbers don't look like Monday's.

Real businesses contain real administration.

The question is where a person is actually necessary.

A person can notice that the customer's request is technically ordinary and obviously isn't. A person can hear hesitation. A person can decide the exception is justified. A person can know that the technically correct answer will create a stupid outcome. A person can persuade, reassure, improvise, teach, negotiate, make, judge, repair and care.

Software is very good at moving a value from one box to another.

We should probably let it.

Automation should remove machinery from people's jobs.

There is a version of automation that begins with a payroll spreadsheet and asks how many names can disappear.

I'm not interested in that project.

I want to know why your project manager spends Friday afternoon assembling information the company already has. I want to know why the salesperson has become a part-time data-entry clerk. I want to know why a customer has to call because your systems cannot tell them something everybody inside the company already knows.

Those are design problems.

AI doesn't change the principle.

AI is astonishing. It is also software. It doesn't get a special exemption from having to be useful.

If it can read something that currently has to be retyped, great. If it can turn a pile of information into a useful first pass, use it. If it can notice something worth putting in front of a person, interesting.

If a normal database rule can do the job more reliably, use the database rule.

If the process itself is stupid, fix the process.

Nobody needs an AI strategy for the sake of possessing an AI strategy.

Businesses need their work to work.

The people doing the work know things.

This gets forgotten in technology projects constantly.

Someone draws the official workflow.

Then the person who actually does the job says, “Yeah, except...”

Pay attention to everything after except.

That's where the business is.

That's where the customer who doesn't fit the dropdown lives. That's where the undocumented approval happens. That's where someone learned six years ago never to trust a particular field. That's where a seemingly pointless step turns out to prevent an expensive mistake.

You cannot improve a job by treating the person doing it as an obstacle to understanding it.

Ask them. Watch. Find out what they are compensating for. Keep the intelligence. Fix the stupid part.

Good systems should make good people more capable.

That is the standard I care about.

The estimator gets more time to estimate. The salesperson gets more time with customers. The manager can see what needs attention without conducting an investigation. The administrator stops being the company's human API. The owner can leave without taking half the operating system home in their head.

And somebody finishes Thursday without realizing they forgot the stupid thing they were supposed to remember Tuesday.

That's a good use of technology.

There will still be work tomorrow.

Good.

I like work.

I just think the work should work.